ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the main principles of frame phenomenological research and introduces some of the main phenomenological influences. It provides an overview of the basic tenets of phenomenology, as well as the branches of the discipline since its early introduction by Husserl in the late 1800s. The chapter also provides a contemporary synthetic approach to phenomenological research and demonstrates how, and in what form, phenomenology provides a basis for understanding human experience. This is exemplified in the experience of people who engage in extreme sports. Existential phenomenologists consider phenomenology to be the philosophy of experience. The phenomenological attitude emphasises the importance of suspending or neutralising natural intentions, defined in a phenomenological sense as the taken-for-granted assumptions which guide everyday life. The chapter underlines the traditions that are phenomenological and that influenced our thinking and the development of the contemporary phenomenological processes.
