Perth Voice Interactive

GETTING therapeutic benefits might seem an unusual side-effect to forging a weapon of war, but bowyer and archer Lars Richter says there’s a lot more to making your own longbow than whittling a piece of wood into shape.

“A bow can be used not just as a sport or a tool to hunt for food, but as a discipline, meditation or spiritual practice as in the popular 1930’s book on Zen Buddhism, Zen in the Art of Archery,” Mr Richter said.

He’s holding a two-day longbow making workshop at the Perth Waldorf School in Bibra Lake on April 20 – 21, and says participants can expect to come away more grounded and in touch with their inner selves.

“Every tribe on Earth has been walking around with a bow and arrow,” he says, noting that it definitely had a smaller influence in Australia, “but it’s something that we seem to inherently know.”

He says straight off the bat a longbow is a weapon, so people have to learn responsibility, but that also helps strengthen a connection to their craftwork, which is usually something that comes as soon as they choose the raw material.

“You see people have this instant connection when they pick it up; ‘this is my piece of wood’,” he says.

“You are creating something beautiful, but it’s practical as well.”

There’s always the odd ‘casualty’ when a bow cracks under pressure while being bent, but he says this helps build resilience and he’s ready to step in to encourage them to start again.

Mr Richter brings his skills as a life coach and counsellor to the workshops, but says he barely needs to do anything and the groups bond and connect throughout the weekend.

The upcoming workshop is open to anyone of any age (he’s had an 80-year-old participant), and some of the participants have come from the school’s year 7 class, as he says it fits in well with the Steiner curriculum.

“As Steiner might have said, you are putting your energy, or spirit, into the piece,” he says.

Mr Richter started a career as an engineer but eventually decided it wasn’t for the long haul: “I worked in that environment until I realised, hang on, that’s not what I want to do for the next 50 years. I changed. I went to India. I had my own yoga school.”

He also had fond memories of longbows from growing up in East Germany, and when he met master bowyer Peter Yencken a few years ago, he learned the tradition of honing a length of wood and now travels the country passing on his skills.

“I work with rasp and file, but I always invite people to bring their own tools if they have them,” he says.

To book a place in the workshop, register at http://www.narrativeyoga.com.au/longbow