10. The Power of Uninterrupted Conversation
Hey Everyone,
This episode was inspired by a much-needed lunch date with my friend Charlotte who, at the time, had a 9-month-old baby at home. With a full time job as a lawyer and a birthday that landed on a Tuesday, a table for two seemed like the perfect gift.
We sat on a comfy patio couch by the harbor on a picture-perfect day in San Diego day. We talked for two full hours in complete sentences, pausing only to order more tacos and remark on how rare and necessary it felt to have an uninterrupted conversation with a friend.
Prior to this special 1:1 time, our hangouts were embellished by all the things kids bring to a social setting, where stories are half-told, and trains of thought get derailed within seconds.
Our kids can’t help but interrupt grown-ups until they reach a certain age. At 3.5 my son is starting to give people their time to talk, and wait for his turn, and still, this level of focused attention is a lot for my brain.
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There’s a certain bewilderment that takes over when the kids bring something in from left-field while Mom is doing something, like serving food. When this happens in my life, usually on the weekends when we’re seeing friends the kids are amped up, I feel like the emoji that got knocked out, Xs over the eyes.
Shifting context from speaking with an adult to paying attention to a child’s needs is a mental feat of endurance. But given the rest of the mental load we carry in early motherhood, do we have the fortitude to process it all, or could we be borrowing from the mental health of our future self?
As a yoga therapist who targets the nervous system to help Moms’ well-being, and a Mom trying to keep my own head straight, I’m paying attention to how little attention we can actually give to ourselves while raising young kids, and finding ways to restore our mental reserves.
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Welcome to Yoga for Mom-Life. I’m Susana Jones, and I’m here to help you not just survive motherhood, but to make it kinder on your body, your mind, and your heart. I teach minimalist yoga and the wisdom of the ages to help Moms live full, vibrant lives.
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In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport (2016) describes an “attention residue” that builds up when we go from the context of an adult interaction, for example, to that of your child tugging on your shirt, needing something from you. Similar to multitasking, when our attention darts around from thing to thing, none of them get fully resolved, and this takes a toll on our ability to think clearly and remember things. What we jokingly call “Mom-brain” is the physiological result of attention fatigue.
Concentration takes directed attention, which we have in limited supply. Luckily, the means to focus and even hear ourselves think after a day of “Mom, Mom” is available to us. According to Attention Restoration Theory, we can turn our directed attention off when we’re in Nature. As we know from being outdoors, things happening in the natural world are gently captivating, which allow the brain’s mechanism for focused attention to replenish (p. 147-148).
When we watch the waves from our beach chair while the kids play, a take a neighborhood walk admiring the plants and trees, we restore our attention. Based on Cal Newport’s research, fifty minutes of such replenishment boosted peoples’ concentration. And I hypothesize that breaking those 50 minutes into smaller chunks throughout the day also really helps.
Another way to recover from scattered thinking is Yoga Nidra. This typically eyes-closed practice happens in stillness. Often people lie down, though it is a form of meditation. It invites awareness into a general sense of well-being, and then welcomes sensations of the entire body, the movement of breath, the flow of thoughts and feelings, and an underlying joy that rests in our core of being.
Like observing Nature, we observe these various phenomena within ourselves, we might find fascinating in such a mild way that when we complete the practice, we feel refreshed, and awake. It’s pretty awesome, and I’m so happy that more of my clients are taking up the practice of Yoga Nidra with me online. It does very good things for our mental and emotional health, which have a strong influence on the body and our lives at large (Miller, ).
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Back to the couch with Charlotte, talking with a friend at length involves more directed attention, but when the conversation flows without interruptions, we have more attention for it. Not having to divide our attention by being vigilant of our children’s safety or making sure that they share their toys, etc., meant that we could express ourselves, and be heard by someone who gets us. This can help us process some of the more complex things happening in our lives as parents while also improving our ability to think clearly and focus when we need to.
Neurologically-speaking, when a complete thought is spoken as a complete sentence, it is as satisfying to the brain as checking something off your to-do list. A tiny win, and a resulting release of happy brain chemicals that further protect our neurons from oxidative stress and inflammation.
Like sunlight burning off the brain fog, an unbroken conversation with a friend can give us a physiological and emotional boost that helps us keep sailing forward.
So here’s how we managed to do that for ourselves and for each other that day:
First of all, our children were in good care elsewhere. One in preschool. One at home with a nanny.
This kind of childcare is not a given in our society, and a family may not have it for a number of reasons, but knowing that our kids were in good hands allowed us to have this time together as friends. Mama’s playdate, if you will.
We took time from work to enjoy life. I’m a big advocate for giving work the least amount of energy possible to have it earn the living we need. So, there’s that.
We kept it 1:1. While more is quite often merrier, we hadn’t hung out together without our whole friend group for a long time, so we were due. This further enabled us to rift on our own wavelength, go on tangents and bring them right back to their starting point, another win for creative thought.
We kept our phones quiet, and only checked them for time to make sure we weren’t going to miss our afternoon meetings, etc.
I shared with Charlotte how I “live on Do Not Disturb”, and set up my emergency contacts such that certain people can reach me no matter what. Otherwise, texts, calls and alerts are silent.
This is a leftover habit from when I was teaching Yoga at weird times all throughout the week, when I needed my phone to stay quiet, but
It keeps me present when I’m spending time with people
This is, of course, extra valuable to me when that person is my son. My phone comes out as little as possible during our time together.
But perhaps most importantly during our lunch date, we didn’t interrupt each other.
Sometimes when we’re excited to see someone we love and we want to know everything, we jump ahead from what they’re actually saying, and miss the opportunity to be fully present with, and for, our friend.
I’m guilty of this too, and I caught myself wanting to interrupt Charlotte out of giddiness most-likely, but we made a concerted effort to let each other finish our thoughts.
That takes self-awareness and patience, which yoga is also good for.
We talked about how getting together with other families is important for our sense of having a “village” and our kids’ socialization. I shared how I get overwhelmed trying to keep an adult conversation going without missing my son’s cues for help or acknowledgement.
While having our attention spans stretched thin is worth being together with our village, there’s a social and a neurological need we may only be able to satisfy in the absence of our kids. And it’s OK to have that in your life, even as a Mom.
Perhaps by meeting that need for ourselves, our kids will learn to become present listeners, good conversationalists, and be able to concentrate when it really matters.
Thus, everyone’s nervous systems stand to benefit from your time speaking in complete sentences with a friend.
So try it, and do tell:
How does it feel
to minimize distractions upfront?
to form and communicate a full thought?
to be heard by a caring adult?
Drop me a line at YogaforMomLife.com, and join my email list so I can invite you to the Summer-to-Fall season of my online yoga studio, with live and on-demand classes geared entirely to your well-being in this brain-bender that is early motherhood.
Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to subscribe to be notified of new episodes every Suzday. It’s Yoga for Mom-Life, and it’s about time.
