A framework for understanding challenging psychedelic experiences is proposed by integrating Yalom's existential psychodynamics with Grof's observations on the causes of difficult experiences during LSD sessions. The author applies hermeneutic practice to psychedelic integration as a practical method, suggesting that interpreting and making meaning from these experiences can be facilitated through this approach.
Mindfulness practice inevitably brings up existential-phenomenological themes, and both mindfulness and existential therapy share many parallels. When Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) includes dedicated mindfulness practice for therapists, it moves from a 'doing mode' of fixing problems to a 'being mode' of staying with experience. MBCT's research on preventing depression relapse in people with chronic depression reveals insights into mindfulness's therapeutic aspects. This paper explores how insights from MBCT and existential therapy can come together, illustrated through a case study. The integration of theoretical models happens within the embodied 'being' of the therapist, not just in textbooks, a synthesis called Mindfulness Based Existential Therapy (MBET).