Breathing our way into mindful academic writing: a collaborative autoethnography of an online writing community

Abstract

Although literature demonstrates that mindfulness practices enhance undergraduate student learning, writing composition, and sense of well-being in higher education, there is minimal research that explores faculty and doctoral student engagement in mindfulness practices to support academic writing and build online writing community. In this collaborative autoethnographic study, we fill this gap by exploring our experiences as five female academics participating in an online mindful writing group where we gathered regularly to meditate and write throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. We developed and engaged in innovative meditations designed to support our academic writing and writer identity. Data included individual position statements and reflections and group conversational interviews. The findings are clustered under three main themes: (a) deepened understanding of the writing process and writer identity as expressions of self-reflection, creativity, and joy that led to greater acceptance of ourselves and others as writers, (b) the role of mindfulness in academic writing as present-moment non-judgemental awareness and acceptance that promoted well-being, and (c) development of a mindful online writing community that provided a space for honesty, vulnerability, knowledge exchange, and knowledge creation. We identified tensions of collaborative writing, such as navigating different writing styles, negotiating writer voice, and interpreting asynchronous feedback. We recommend that universities support the development of online mindfulness-based writing communities and pedagogies recognising that faculty and doctoral students vary in their continuum of mindfulness practices and, thus, are likely to hold different expectations from such communities.