Understanding hermeneutic phenomenology as a research method requires the definition and discussion of terms that may initially appear daunting – beginning with the phrase "hermeneutic phenomenology" itself. Phenomenology is the study of experience, particularly as it is lived and as it is structured through consciousness. "Experience" in this context refers not so much to accumulated evidence or knowledge as something that we "undergo." It is something that happens to us, and not something accumulated and mastered by us. Phenomenology asks that we be open to experience in this sense. Hermeneutics, for its part, is the art and science of interpretation and thus also of meaning.