The Integrated Heart of Cultural and
Mindfulness Meditation Practice in Existential
Phenomenology and Humanistic Psychotherapy
Andrew J. Felder
University of California,
Los Angeles
Brent Dean Robbins
Point Park University
At this time, it does not appear that existential phenomenology and humanistic psychology
(PHP) have formed inclusive, process-oriented frameworks that reference the sociocultural
and contextual significations embedded in the flow of everyday human experience. And yet
apart from the welcome variety of psychotherapy approaches comprising PHP, the founding
existential phenomenological and humanistic thinkers had already addressed cultural issues
in their writings. In addition, these same founding thinkers had already developed mindful-
ness meditation perspectives well ahead of the mindfulness-based cognitive– behavioral
therapy third wave. This article considers the link between PHP’s emphasis on attuned
mindfulness and meditative sociocultural awareness as part of an emerging mindful and
multicultural humanistic-existential psychotherapy (MMHEP) approach. MMHEP fluidly
supports both mindfulness and meditative attunement to clients’ culture-near or context-near
experiences as part of an experience-near attentiveness to the groundless ground of experi-
ence. By reuniting the landscape of “inward” possibilities for bare and present moment mind-
fulness with the meditative awareness of “outer” sociocultural realms, a client may integratively
connect with a greater sense of wholeness as a sociocultural-being-in-the-world.
Keywords: culture existential psychotherapy, person-centered therapy, existential humanistic
therapy, mindfulness-based therapy, existential phenomenological psychotherapy
Will we psychologists continue to be peripheral to our society, or will we risk the dangers of
being a significant social factor?
—Carl Rogers, A Way of Being (1980, p. 257)
The vitalizing connection between mindfulness meditation and sociocultural contexts
has yet to be articulated in a practically and philosophically grounded manner across the
rich landscape of contemporary humanistic and existential phenomenological psychother-
apy approaches. In this article, we begin to explore how and why an emerging mindful and
Andrew J. Felder, Counseling and Psychological Services, University of California, Los Angeles;
Brent Dean Robbins, Department of Humanities and Human Sciences, Point Park University.
Special thanks to Julie Neudeck for her thoughtful reviews of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Andrew J. Felder, Counseling
and Psychological Services, University of California, Los Angeles, John Wooden Center West, Box
951556, Los Angeles, CA 90095. E-mail: andrfeld@aol.com
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
The Humanistic Psychologist © 2016 American Psychological Association
2016, Vol. 44, No. 2, 105–126 0887-3267/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hum0000021
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