Biography
Beginning of Kenja

The Second World War was over. But another 'war' raged on.

It was 1946, in peace time Australia. There was Ken, having survived the War mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, heightened in a reality of the need for love, caring, honesty, courage and respect to survive. And all at once, he was confronted with people in peace time, who did not understand the need for a commitment to these principles or the need to relate to each other with spirit-human consciousness.

What can you do? Accept the lack of spiritual awareness in the environment and so become unaware of your own self? Or remain true to your own universe, the spiritual universe, choosing not to betray its principles?

Ken decided he simply would not sell those principles out.

This may have been the beginning of the realisation for Ken that he could explore his own abilities and potential to help people understand these principles too. He could help others obtain a sense of their own self- determinism.

So around 1946 in parallel with the beginning of a 24 + year business career, Ken consciously began to explore and understand what was it that made a person betray respect, friendship, love, caring and self-honesty, almost as a socially acceptable way of life.

He began to explore and study anything that came across his path: from different religions, west and east; to philosophers, great writers; anything that would give an insight into the spiritual universe. In business, Ken became very successful, because every dealing with another person became an exercise in learning how he could validate the spiritual awareness of the person.

He also successfully started many of his own businesses.

Ken evolved an accounting system called Accountex Taxation Records, selling tens of thousands of copies in the metropolitan areas of Sydney alone (a system still in operation today); he traded in precious stones; amongst several other inventions he developed an egg carton for eggs; he worked through the corporate area as a public company director and was a troubleshooter for Consolidated Press as well as a national representative in this area.

Many of Ken's anecdotes and stories came from this period as he explored the effectiveness of holding on to love and a commitment to the viewpoint of the spiritual universe in all his dealings with people. He found it more successful than one-up-manship, or the basic game of 'I'll get you before you get me'. He was so successful during this period because he validated for himself the very principles he had grown up with, caring for others and holding decency there. He also began to explore why these qualities were not naturally there with people sometimes - when they were so obviously there at other times.

Marriage and family

It was also during these post-war years that Ken married - twice. His first marriage was to Judith Scott Fox in August 1946. This marriage ended in September 1950. He married again in March 1951 and his marriage to Marie O'Donnell ended in 1973. Committed to both relationships and an idealist in love and the heart, Ken took responsibility for these relationships failings himself and strove to learn from them as he moved on in life.

He had two sons with Marie - Mike and Steve. Anyone who knew Ken was to understand the unlimited love and commitment he had for them both. His friends often heard Mike and Steve's story and knew Ken's commitment to them. Striving constantly for the welfare of them both, Ken's postulate for his children was that they would be a gift to society. Through his life, Ken's joy in their childhood was reflected in many anecdotal stories, not only relating where Ken was effective in communicating to the children, but also in the wisdom the children had offered him as they grew.

During these years Ken was an instructor at the Rose Bay Youth Club where he taught boxing, gymnastics and tumbling. He introduced the use of boxing bags to teach safe and effective tackling. This is now standard procedure. He was also a delegate for the Under 14s Eastern Suburbs Rugby Union Football Association.

By the end of the 60's, Ken was well-respected in the community and his business - Sales and Motivational Services Pty Ltd - saw him contracted by American holding companies to handle their executives in Australia when their figures were down. Ken's understanding and practical application of a spirit-human consciousness made him very effective: He got results.

He could work with a group of executives and help them operate outside their defences and stuck identities. This brought them back into human communication with their sales team. Once the executives treated their teams like people with a human quality - in other words, once they had a sense of spiritual consciousness and began to be concerned about the growth of the individuals in that team - they would simply get co-operation and sales would go up.

Then, in the early 70's, he ceased all his business roles and completely changed his life.

Devastated by a newly emerging drug culture and the ravages it was vesting upon young Australians including his sons, Ken set up a business as a glazier so he could work just a couple of days a week and focus the rest of his time on understanding the drug phenomenon in order to help. Back then, there were no drug rehabilitation centres. The problem was yet to be recognised. So Ken went to places where young addicts went, trying to understand how he could help people overcome their addiction. He was successful in getting many young people off drugs and onto leading healthy lives, including his own boys.

At the same time Ken was developing a reputation for real effectiveness in the area of human behaviour, helping people overcoming negative influences in their lives. And people had started coming to him. He was seen as someone who could help them achieve what they wanted from life, because he was doing it himself.

Over time he began evolving methods of assisting people in understanding and detaching from, or clearing, their attachment to energies within themselves that restricted them from living happy and successful lives. And his reputation for the work he was doing spread around the world.

Ken's research and findings ultimately crystallised into a technique he called Energy Conversion meditation: A simple one-on-one meditation that enabled one individual, through the stillness of another, to become conscious of the energies that were creating negative effects in their thinking and their lives, and then to dissipate them. The action enhanced spiritual consciousness. By becoming conscious of the energy causing the problem and getting rid of that energy, the problem disappeared.

With this practical and extremely effective tool for personal change, Ken became highly respected and sought after. He was repeatedly asked to go overseas with his work, requests he declined as he felt an ongoing commitment to Australia. "If we can make it work here," he would argue, "It'll work anywhere in the world." And so Ken stayed, continuing to work from the small unit he had lived in since the 50's.

Ken meets Jan Hamilton

In 1978, the next phase of Ken's life began when he met Jan Hamilton.

Jan had returned from three years full time study on an Arts Australia Council grant at the East 15 Acting School in London. Part of her training had been the study of 'clowning' - not painted-face clowning, but the use of particular exercises designed to reach in and touch the human part of each individual and to 'bring out' the human spirit in people.

This was totally aligned with everything Ken knew about the human.

And so Ken encouraged and helped Jan expand her own work in this area. It was the beginning of a thirty-year relationship and the formation of Kenja. Ken began to give classes, sharing his realities on the spirit, human, mind, genetic and body. From there, Energy Conversion classes began. Soon, Ken began training others to run Energy Conversion meditation exercises, making it accessible to many more people. Concurrently, Jan ran clowning classes, applying Ken's work to expand her own and others' reality on the human viewpoint. So the essence of Kenja began to evolve: a space where there was an opportunity to expand our consciousness of ourselves spiritually and to become conscious of and responsible for the human spirit in us all. This was to grow into something quite magnificent, and Kenja continues to grow and evolve today.

The beginning of Kenja Communication

Ken Dyers and Jan Hamilton formally co-founded Kenja Communication in Sydney in 1982. The word 'KENJA' is simply an anagram of their names. As the Kenja website states, ‘Kenja offers practical training in effective personal communication and in the exploration of spiritual detachment. It helps people develop their understanding of stable spiritual truths, then apply these to daily life for the benefit of all’. Over the following years and as a result of Kenja’s rising popularity, a range of activities were established, applying Kenja training from sporting teams to music, choir, tap dancing, ballet, gymnastics, poetry, ballroom dancing, and educational activities for children. Throughout all these activities Ken insisted on an ethic towards the human. What this meant was that standards of behaviour and ethics towards each other were core to each Kenja activity, rather than the goals of being the best, of winning, of achieving excellence at any cost – which so often pervades sporting activity and wipes out the human content.

In Kenja, activities have the basic purpose of bringing out the best in each other. Ken's contribution to ethical standards in this area over the years meant Kenja activities have become renowned for their good sportsmanship, lack of degradation, and bringing out the best in the person through every activity. Kenja grew to be recognised as a disciplined and ‘safe environment’ built on human trust, where individuals could feel free to explore their potential. During this period, Ken also became renowned as an excellent public speaker. He would almost always speak to sold-out houses. His lectures were endearing and enlightening. He took the human condition out of mystery and put understanding back in the individual's own hands. He gave classes and seminars which were renowned and exciting because of the insight and understanding Ken showed.

It is estimated that close to 100,000 people heard Ken speak over the Kenja years. He literally helped thousands of people individually to lead fulfilling and successful lives in and out of Kenja. As Ken travelled around Australia lecturing and giving seminars, his audiences grew to be extremely diverse and included Polish medical professors; senior members of the Australian Defence forces - Army, Navy and Airforce; the Australian Development Assistance Bureau of the Department of Foreign Affairs with trainees from different countries; at the Professors World Peace Academy of Australia – the list goes on. Ken’s work was working. People using the work became more successful, happier. Families became happier and more aligned to each other. It is remarkable to think that there is zero drug use or criminality within the people doing Kenja work. Wonderful friendships are developed. Children become leaders, able to resist negative peer pressure because they know how to own their own space and life. They know how to speak up and be counted and are successful at school and sport, and are privvy to the best training in many areas, in culture, in sport and in their communication skills.

Always accompanied by their parents, young kids grew up with tremendous self-respect, enhanced by their interchange with Ken. Many young people who grew up supported by Ken and Kenja are today highly successful, valued members of society, working and living in a diverse range of areas – some now have families of their own and are passing on the invaluable lessons and ethics they learned, to their own children.Ken's deep, understanding of the need for personal ethics established Kenja as a very safe place.

It wasn’t until 1992 when Ken was 70, that the first orchestrated attacks against Ken and his work began.