Pratique du Shadowing: It’s Not Too Late | April Nading | TEDxUSI - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec YouTube

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Well, this is exciting.

I love it when so many people come out to learn how to do handstands.

Just kidding.

You're not all going to do handstands,

but I am going to talk about them.

Namely, how learning to do a handstand in my 50s changed my life

and made me realize that if you challenge yourself and refuse to give up,

it's not too late to go after your big dreams or goals and to make things happen for yourself.

I'm April Nading, but my alter ego is the handstanding grandma.

I'm a 63-year-old grandmother with four grandchildren, and I do handstands.

Now, you may be thinking,

she probably did handstands as a kid,

and then re-learned them in her 50s.

Is it really that big a deal that she's doing handstands now?

But here's the thing.

Not only had I never done a handstand in my younger life,

I never even participated in any physical activities.

That's because I grew up in a non-sports house.

In our non-sports house, my parents didn't play or watch sports,

and neither did I.

I can even remember my parents making fun of people who like sports,

shaking their heads in disappointment when they heard someone mention baseball or basketball or football.

Not only did we not like sports, we were just inactive.

No pitch and catch in the backyard,

no family bowling nights, no miniature golf outings.

So needless to say, I did not excel in gym class.

As a matter of fact,

I hated gym class, and I was usually one of the last people picked for the team.

But I didn't really care because I didn't want to play in the first place.

I scoffed at physical activities, just like my parents.

I thought it was a big waste of time and I did not want to be a part of it.

Now that inactive trend and bad attitude about sports and physical activity continued through high school,

college, and in early adulthood.

I even managed to marry someone who shared the same disinterest in sports as I did.

Again, no sports in our house.

But that all changed after my divorce at the age of 39.

I started dating a guy who practiced hot yoga,

and he was insistent that I practice with him.

Hot yoga?

Do you know about hot yoga?

Prior to that, I had never heard of hot yoga,

and what I found out did not make me want to do it.

Did you know they heat the room to 110 degrees?

And then, as if that isn't hot enough and drippy enough for you,

they have humidifiers blasting to make it even hotter and drippier.

I had no interest in doing this.

I'm a prissy girl.

Do you know what humidity does to my hair?

But still, I caved, and I went to hot yoga,

and I hated it.

I can remember lying on the floor,

thinking, please, God, blow some cold air on me.

And then I even started wondering,

Maybe the instructor doesn't realize how hot it is.

Should I raise my hand and let her know?

They know.

Every time I went, I swore it would be my last time. But you know what?

I noticed a difference in my body after just a few weeks.

For the first time in my life,

I had muscle tone, at an age that some would consider to be later in life.

My children even noticed my newfound strength and said,

Mom, you have big muscles.

And then people started describing me as athletic.

Me, the girl who never played sports,

was being described as athletic.

And not only did I notice a difference in my appearance,

this hot yoga and being in shape was also changing my perspective.

I realized that if I practiced and made an effort,

I actually got better at the poses.

And just by practicing two or three times a week,

I had more stamina in my everyday life.

I didn't get out of breath going up and down the stairs.

My arm didn't hurt from carrying my coat when I walked through the mall.

Sex was better.

And that's not all.

I even started eating better.

It didn't really make sense to go through all that sweat

and punishment and then ruin it with a Big mac and a milkshake,

and I started paying attention to what I was putting in my body.

I even started drinking water.

Did I mention that in my non-sports,

non-active house, we never drank water?

Although I don't really think anybody in the 1960s and 70s intentionally drank water.

We were pretty much weaned on sweet tea and soft drinks,

and that's what we drank morning, noon, and night.

Yoga made such a positive difference in my life, I kept practicing.

I liked that I I'd looked and felt stronger and could put my body in positions I'd never heard of.

I became an instructor and an advocate for physical fitness.

Again, me, the girl who hated gym class,

was now a middle-aged woman in the best shape of her life.

Now that's not supposed to happen, is it?

Middle age is when we're supposed to go downhill physically, or is it?

Or is that something we just tell ourselves in order to give ourselves permission to be out of shape?

Another thing I noticed was that being strong

and in shape also made me feel more confident and like I could try new things.

And not just in the yoga room in the gym,

it carried over into my everyday life.

By the way, the yoga guy and I broke up.

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I kept doing yoga, but he did not.

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And then in 2012, my 50th birthday rolled around.

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I love birthdays.

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I especially love milestone birthdays.

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And I decided for my 50th,

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I needed to do something really meaningful.

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So I came up with a list of 50 things to do my 50th year.

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Now, some of those things were really important,

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like spending more time with my mother,

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flossing my teeth, learning more yoga Sanskrit.

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But as I scrambled to fill that list,

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50 things is a lot,

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I just started throwing in random items.

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And one of them was learn to do a handstand.

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Now, I'm still not sure why I put that on there.

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Like I said, I'd never done one as a kid,

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and as an adult, it just wasn't something that I really cared about.

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I'd even been to some yoga workshops where the instructor would say,

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OK, let's go to the wall and work on handstands,

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and I'd get kind of mad about it.

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I didn't care about learning a handstand.

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I realize now, though, that what made me angry was the fact

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that I was so far removed from doing a handstand that I didn't even want to try to do it.

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I was pretty good at convincing myself that it didn't matter if I tried.

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I mean, if I didn't try, I didn't fail.

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And then I didn't feel foolish trying to do something that I knew I couldn't do in the first place.

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Isn't it crazy how our brains work?

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Sometimes our own minds work against us.

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Doesn't it seem like they should always be working for us,

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saying rah-rah things like, you can do it,

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or how will you do it if you We never try.

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Instead, our minds say, this is too hard,

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you're too old, it's too late to try that.

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And then we manage to convince ourselves

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that there's really no point in trying difficult things that we somehow decide don't really matter in the first place.

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But I decided I would work on handstands.

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I mean, I had written it down and sort of put it out there to the universe.

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It seemed like I should at least try to do it.

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First thing I had to get past,

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though, was the F word.

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F-E-A-R, fear.

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It's the four-letter word that digs its claws in and holds us captive.

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Everybody's been afraid of something.

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Sometimes fear keeps us from doing stupid things.

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But oftentimes, we let fear,

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mostly fear of failure, hold us back and stop us from trying new things and moving forward.

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Now, some of my fears were legitimate.

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Fear of looking foolish, fear of falling.

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I mean, I might be in good shape,

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but I am not quite as cavalier about falling and hurting myself as I was as a kid.

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So at first, my fear-filled attempts at handstanding consisted of me putting my hands on the floor,

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willing myself to kick up,

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and then nothing, nothing happened because I was afraid.

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Now, I could have thrown in the towel and said,

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who cares if I handstand?

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I wasn't being graded.

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I wasn't going to make more money or get a promotion.

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And truthfully, I wasn't going to do all the other things on my 50 list.

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I mean, I had put Go Camping on there,

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and that was so not going to happen.

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So wouldn't that have been a great way to talk myself out of doing something that was difficult and scared me?

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But I didn't talk myself out of it.

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I went to workshops on how to do handstands.

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I watched videos and I read articles.

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And eventually, I was able to kick up to the wall without a spotter.

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Yes.

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But I was really bad at it.

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My attempts at kicking up weren't just awkward.

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They were clumsy and they were noisy.

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Kabam!

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Kabam!

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So loud that my kids would come running in the room to make sure I hadn't hurt myself

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or put a hole in the wall.

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Now I have to say this was a little discouraging

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and sometimes I'd back away from handstands and pretend like they didn't matter.

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But it did matter.

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I really wanted to do this.

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Sure, it was challenging.

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Sure, I was a middle-aged grandmother trying to learn how to do a handstand.

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Sure, there was a chance that I might hurt myself.

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But there was also the distinct possibility that I might eventually get it.

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So I kept practicing, and I actually started making some progress.

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Still wasn't kicking up in the middle of the room.

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But my kabams became thuds,

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and like a drug, my small improvements gave me a high that left me wanting more.

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And then came the setbacks.

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You didn't think this was a smooth sailing,

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nothing bad happened story, did you?

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In 2015, I had rotator cuff surgery on my left shoulder.

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Now, this wasn't due to handstands.

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This was just stupid arthritis that caused bone spurs and caused a tear.

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But that put everything physical on the back burner.

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No more hot yoga, no more handstands,

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just at-home exercises and physical therapy for several months.

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Now, I could have skipped the surgery and used a rotator cuff tear as a reason to not do handstands anymore.

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I mean, aren't we all subconsciously looking for that legitimate reason to explain why we're no longer doing something difficult

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or why we can no longer try?

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The old April, or should I say the younger April,

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would have done that.

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But new April used hot yoga and handstands as a reason to have the surgery and then to work hard on recovery.

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I was determined to get back to hot yoga and handstands,

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and I was probably the most diligent patient they've ever had.

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Now, I must point out here that being in good shape does not make you impervious to illness or injury,

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but it does help with your recovery.

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In fact, my physical therapist said that my fitness level put my recovery way ahead of most patients.

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But that wasn't the only setback.

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In 2018, I had rotator cuff surgery on the other shoulder.

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Just bone spurs this time and not a tear,

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so the recovery wasn't as long.

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But still, no handstands or hot yoga for several weeks.

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Then in 2019, just as I was getting brave enough to start kicking up in the middle of the room

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and holding it for a millisecond,

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I fell, hit the dresser,

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busted open the bottom of my foot,

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and had to get stitches just below my big toe.

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Ow!

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Now, I had some people who thought that would be the end of my handstanding attempts,

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but it wasn't.

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I was this close to getting it,

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and I refused to You give up. And then came 2020.

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I think we all know what happened in 2020.

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And while there was a lot of bad stuff going on,

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I actually had some positives.

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I started working from home,

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and that gave me more time to work on handstands.

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I actually started getting a few seconds of hold time in the middle of the room.

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I also started planking, streaming them on social media,

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and worked up to a five-minute hold.

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I still plank just about every day.

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Oh, and one other teensy little thing happened in 2020.

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I had my left hip replaced.

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Yeah, this hip is an artificial part.

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Now, I'm not going to lie to you.

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Finding out I needed a new hip at the age of 57 was a huge blow for me.

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I was only 57.

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I was in good shape.

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This shouldn't happen to me.

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So I got a new hip.

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Yes, it was another setback.

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And wouldn't that have been yet another good reason to stop doing handstands?

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New hip.

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Sorry, couldn't do handstands anymore.

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but a setback is temporary.

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As a matter of fact,

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the definition of a setback is a delay in progress, not an end.

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So even though my recovery would be several weeks,

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it still wouldn't be too late for me to work on handstands.

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First thing I asked my doctor when I went for my post-op appointment was,

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when can I plank and do handstands again?

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He said I was the first patient who's ever asked him that.

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Now, I didn't have to go back to doing handstands and planks,

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but what was the point of getting my new hip if I wasn't going to use it to do things I enjoyed?

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I also should mention here that in 2024,

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I had my other hip replaced.

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Apparently, what happens on one side usually happens on the other.

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Now, it was shortly after my first hip replacement recovery that I began to feel more confident in my handstand abilities.

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Oh, it still took me numerous times to kick up,

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and I still fell out a lot,

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but now without humiliation and injury.

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And I realized that all the drills and practices and injuries and setbacks over a seven-year time period were worth it.

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Did you hear what I just said?

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It took me seven years to learn how to do a handstand away from the wall.

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Seven years.

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Does that sound crazy?

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Would I have done it if someone had told me from the beginning,

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it might take me seven years to learn how to do it.

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I'm not sure, but I'm so glad I did.

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And I'm actually happy that it wasn't easy.

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Now, let me explain why.

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If it had been easy,

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I would have missed out on that wonderful journey.

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If it had been easy,

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I wouldn't have experienced that wonderful feeling of accomplishment from my success.

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If it had been easy,

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I wouldn't have these great stories to share with others.

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Now, my intention is not to convince you to do a handstand,

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although I am always happy to talk about them if you're interested.

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I want you to find your handstand,

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your goal, your thing you've been wanting to do

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but think it might be too hard to do or too late to try.

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The thing you've been putting off because you're afraid of trying or failing.

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The thing that will make you excited to get out of bed in the morning.

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That's truly how I feel about handstands.

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It may be hard, it may take a few years, but so what?

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The personal satisfaction you'll gain from your accomplishment will stay with you for the rest of your life.

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Find your handstand.

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Life's too short, but it's not too late.

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Reviewer.

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Thank you.

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Pratique du Shadowing: It’s Not Too Late | April Nading | TEDxUSI - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec YouTube

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