Just open your eyes and look. Just lend an ear and listen. Here is the world.

It is the nature surrounding us, it's everything out there: the mountains shrouded in clouds; the streams flowing with water; the greenery of the forests; the people on the streets. It all takes place as if of its own accord, each individual being playing its part, seemingly all by itself and yet, these phenomena are all intertwined with each other, each phenomenon attesting to the existence of other phenomena.

At times, the heart overflows with joy and wonder, marveling at the beauty of nature, and on occasion, it cringes at the sight of a stranger, recoiling from the unknown. This is human existence!

The term DASEIN, which means "being there" or "being in the world," aptly illustrates these interactions between man and the world: Human existence is intertwined with and permeated in the world as an inseparable part of it, just as the world, home to human existence, is imbued with its meaning and purpose.

These are, in a nutshell, some of the features of the existential phenomenological approach, which provides the philosophical basis for the INTERSUBJECTIVE approach and the FOCUSING approach.

The existential phenomenological approach enables us "to be there" – to be fully present in the world. It conveys a sense of wholeness that accepts and contains the contrasting aspects of the self, the continuous changes and vicissitudes, both internal and external, bringing it all together –past and future, truth and untruth – into the here and now, into a current completeness.