THERE'S a little piece of Scandinavia in the mountains of Walwa.
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Neil Lewis is a proponent of "stav", which is described as an ancient Norwegian system of training the mind, body and spirit.
Neil is one of a handful who teach stav.
"What it's taught me is to see things in a different way," Neil said.
"It's opened my mind up a lot more and relaxed me, the breathing that you do is meditation and through that you go into journey work and healing.
"It's very simple, but at the same time very complicated."
Neil said he first became interested in the system 20 years ago.
"I'd been doing martial arts most of my life and never found anything I bonded with," he said.
"But this felt like it was in my DNA."
Neil has travelled the world teaching the system, which he said was based on the ancient runes.
"It's all to do with mind sets," he said.
"All the runes do is open a door in your mind and teach you to think."
He said the ancient runes were only ever read once a year at winter solstice to see what would happen to the family and whether it would be a good year or a bad year.
But they also formed the basis for everything else, from meditation to martial arts.
Neil said the martial arts movements were based on using a walking stick (a single-handed sword) and staff (a two-handed sword) and axe.