Frode Johansen is a clinical psychologist and meditation teacher based in Norway. He's a father of two, a husband, and someone who has been quietly fascinated by the deeper questions of human experience for as long as he can remember.

The Big Questions

Growing up in a small village in northern Norway, there wasn't much context for the kinds of questions Frode was drawn to. Among his friends he was just an ordinary kid. But underneath, he was quietly consumed by the big questions. What is God? What is life? What is goodness?

By the time he was thirteen he had spent all his savings travelling across the country for a meditation and yoga retreat. That was over thirty years ago. Since then he has studied with teachers from many traditions, lived in monasteries, and spent a lot of time in silence.

Two Paths

Eventually he came at the same questions from a different direction. He studied psychology, became a therapist, and sat on the other side of the couch as a client himself. Both paths taught him something real. And both left him with the same quiet sense that there was a deeper layer underneath — something the contemplative traditions have always known, and that he wanted to understand through the language of modern psychology.

That intersection — between what the traditions have always worked with and what psychology and neuroscience are now mapping — is where his work lives.

Today

Frode lives in Norway with his wife and two children. When he's not writing or working with clients, he's usually outdoors, meditating, or trying to keep up with his kids. He's the creator of the EAST framework and the author of Existential Safety.

Building all of this — the book, the framework, the website, the app, the community — while running a private practice and raising two kids with a dog underfoot, wasn't something he could do alone. His wife has been his biggest supporter — coaching him to actually get it done, and listening to more than a decade of endless talk about his discoveries and theories.