Taravajra shares the inside story of his experience and anguish co-writing ‘Mindfulness: The basics‘. Published by Routledge, the book provides a comprehensive introduction to what mindfulness is, how and why it’s useful, and guidance for practice.
The writing team was formed
In 2022, Rebecca Crane, the director of CMRP Bangor University at the time was asked by Routledge, a well known UK publisher if she could suggest potential authors for a book about mindfulness for the Basics series. My colleagues in the Bangor/Mindfulness Network teaching team Sophie Sansom, David Shannon and I responded to say we can do this! However, we are all busy people and many practical questions quickly emerged about writing this book.
When we looked at other books in the Basics series we saw that they are not actually very basic. How do we write a readable basics book that is also academically respectable? What are the important topics to include? What do we want to say about mindfulness that has not already been said? Who is our audience?
We decided that we wouldn’t be writing another general introduction as there are already many excellent examples available. We thought students of nursing, social work or counselling could benefit from a well referenced and rounded introduction to the subject. So that’s the audience we wrote for. However, I have been encouraged that a friend who is a very experienced mindfulness teacher found the book to be stimulating.
Self-doubt creeps in
We have different backgrounds and interests, and, as we discovered, different writing styles. Yikes, how will we coordinate all this? Overt time we learned how to do this with good humour, patience and many meetings over a long period. Writing, reviewing, discussing, it was a rich process.
At one point I was remembering the challenge of writing a thesis 15 years ago. The pressure of limited time and deadlines (real or self-imposed) ‘I should be writing but I don’t want to!’ and ‘I want to do something else’. And then I don’t do the something else (walk, other work) and I don’t do any writing. Hmmm, this felt familiar and awkward. At some point I realised that I had developed an aversive reaction to writing. This also included a healthy dollop of self-doubt with questions like: Will my writing be any good? What will my two colleagues think about my writing?
Naming the aversion helped
In his book Deeper Mindfulness. Mark Williams suggests that each time we put a task off (aka procrastination) the task takes on a more unpleasant tinge (feeling tone/vedana). I felt resistance and some dislike of the project. Naming this aversion was the key first step that enabled me to work with the whole dynamic.
In essence, I needed to cultivate greater friendliness towards the project. Drawing on my knowledge of mindfulness and Focusing (developed by Gene Gendlin) I was able to communicate with the parts of me that had difficulties with getting on with the writing. I did manage this sufficiently to finish my writing and record new audio practices which accompany the book. We all worked very hard, separately and together, to bring the book into the world.
Taravajra has been part of the teaching and training team at the Sussex Mindfulness Centre since its beginning in 2010. He will be attending the conference on 15 May 2026 where he will be happy to sign copies of this book. The next Deeper Mindfulness course co-led by Taravajra, starts on 27 May 2026.