Shadowing Practice: 3 questions to help you age stronger, healthier, and happier | Dr. Brenda Lau | TEDxSurrey - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Transcriber: Manel Djabali Reviewer: Doris Pop I'm a doctor and a pain specialist.
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Transcriber: Manel Djabali Reviewer: Doris Pop I'm a doctor and a pain specialist.
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For over 25 years, I've worked inside the health care system, treating pain and following guidelines.
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And yet again and again, I've seen capable, motivated people lose something.
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Medicine never warned them about.
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Not the years of life.
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The years of strength.
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My mom once told me something that I'll never forget.
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She said, I'm not afraid of dying.
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I'm afraid of not being strong enough to get up from my chair, not dying, standing up.
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Moms have a way of seeing further down the road than we do.
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But that moment stopped me.
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It showed to me a blind spot in the way we think about health.
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Every day I see us put enormous energy in treating disease, and yet we rarely put strength first.
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And no, this is not a talk about fitness trends or exercise strength shows up in mobility power balance mindset.
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Science shows that building strength changes mood, energy, pain, even brain health as we age.
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For me, strength means freedom.
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The ability to live life with multiple options.
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And yet, strength quietly slips away when the muscles and bones stop receiving the signals that they need.
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Movement. Challenge. Nourishment.
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Those same routines don't work forever, and many of us weren't taught that.
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The truth is, I wasn't either.
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I learned it the hard way.
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At 47, I was told I had osteopenia lower than expected bone density.
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I remember looking at the scan.
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How could this be me?
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Weak bones. I'd been exercising for decades marathons, triathlons, yoga.
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What I didn't understand then was that my body was changing.
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And for women, shifts in hormones, especially estrogen, leads to faster loss of muscle and bone.
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I missed the signals.
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I didn't connect the dots.
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So I did what many driven people do.
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I just tried harder, more exercise, more effort.
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One short year later, I still lost bone density.
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I froze. I thought I was doing everything right, I was moving, I was active, but when this doctor didn't know what her body needed, this patient kept losing strength.
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And if someone like me inside the system could miss this, the problem wasn't effort.
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It was missing information.
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And this wasn't just my blind spot.
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For a long time, many women and clinicians were not taught how differently and early that women's bodies changed.
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Yet, we were taught that women’s fitness was more cardio and less food.
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That's when it dawned on me I wasn't failing.
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I was weakening because I was doing the wrong work for the body I had now.
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Trying harder wasn't the solution.
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Doing differently is.
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And for women especially, this is a shift in thinking we cannot afford to put off.
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I promised myself I would figure this out.
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I wasn't going to wait for another diagnosis to act.
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I relearned women's health from scratch night after night, reading studies, articles and books.
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I tested all of this science on myself.
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Let's just say for a lot of years, my clinical team heard about it a lot.
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I shared with my patients what appeared to work, and we tested these new plans slowly and carefully.
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Weakness does not have to be a normal part of aging.
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Research shows that strength responds even at a later age when you give it the right work.
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And that right work looks different for everyone, but it changes with age.
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There is no one size fits all way to build strength.
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However, from across the research and my own experience.
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Three essentials kept showing up.
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First, essential interrupt.
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Prolonged sitting.
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The conveniences of modern life are slowly working against our strength.
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Office chairs keeping us still.
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TV shows instead of nature walks.
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These aren't our personal failings.
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This is the environment we've created.
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What matters is movement throughout the day.
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Second. Essential. Challenging those muscles and bones.
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Cardio, including walking, are great for heart health, but they're often not enough to maintain muscles and bones over time.
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Safe and progressive challenge supports strength.
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Third, essential eating to build those muscles and bones, they need fuel, especially protein.
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And as we age, many of us need more than we realize, though that amount varies from person to person.
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So that's why I stopped giving people more instructions and I started offering them three questions.
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Questions that we can use every day for our own check ins.
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Here they are.
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One. Did I interrupt my sitting time today?
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Two. Did I safely challenge my muscles and bones?
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Three. Did I eat in a way that builds those muscles and bones?
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Look, those questions don't replace medical care.
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And they look different for everyone.
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But those yes stays add up.
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What matters is not giving up, asking them and getting the help along the way.
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Medical guidance, skilled health care trainers.
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People who understand pain and progressive recovery.
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Because strength isn't built perfectly.
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It's built consistently with adaptations over time.
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Once I started asking these three questions, honestly, I couldn't stop.
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I asked my friends, my family, my coworkers, my patients, even the grocery store clerks. I asked everyone.
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And the day I started answering the three questions for myself, I went downstairs to lift weights.
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My husband stared at me.
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He said, we've had this home gym for 13 years and you've just found it.
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I said, yes, and it's lovely down here.
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Now we race for the gym.
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Guess who wins.
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With my work and care teams help, my yesterdays are adding up.
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My bones are getting stronger.
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I can deadlift £225.
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But this changed what I thought was possible for me, and it definitely changed the kinds of questions I asked my patients.
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Let me tell you about Darlene.
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She was 73 when she came to the clinic.
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With back pain and a lot of self doubt.
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She cried. I'm so scared.
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No one knows what to do.
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I held her hand. Don't give up.
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We'll find a way.
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We started with a simple strength plan that she could do at home.
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And over time, with guidance and patience and adjustments, we supported her movement.
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Gradual strength work.
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The nourishment and all that pain care.
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It wasn't easy at first, but she stuck with it.
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and seven months later she walked in with a new confidence, smiling from ear to ear.
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She taking her training routines at me and showing me all her progress.
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I was so happy for her.
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That was her path with careful medical guidance.
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But Darlene's success pointed to something much greater.
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When the goal of getting stronger is supported, people often regain every day choices hope and joy.
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Now imagine these different paths forward where strength is a part of treatment conversations where we ask these three questions repeatedly because the answers change with age, where we accept that the work can be uncomfortable, even messy, but yet still worth doing.
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Strength is not about chasing youth.
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It is about protecting our future choices.
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Strength is one part of our health that we can actively build ourselves.
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Strength, response to nourishment.
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A response to challenge.
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Strength responds when we choose movement over sitting still.
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I see strength as freedom, and freedom is built one deliberate choice at a time.
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Thank you.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will engage with insights from Dr. Brenda Lau's TEDx talk on aging stronger, healthier, and happier. As you practice, you will focus on enhancing your listening and speaking skills through shadowing techniques. Shadowing involves imitating the speaker's rhythm, intonation, and pronunciation, which is an effective way to improve English pronunciation and fluency. By analyzing Dr. Lau's compelling message on strength and health, you will enrich your vocabulary and improve your overall English speaking practice.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Strength: The quality or state of being physically strong.
- Mobility: The ability to move or be moved freely and easily.
- Bone density: A measurement of the amount of bone mineral in bone tissue, indicating strength and health.
- Nourishment: The substances necessary for growth, health, and good condition.
- Challenge: A difficult task or situation that tests someone's abilities.
- Mindset: The established set of attitudes held by someone.
- Osteopenia: A condition where bone mineral density is lower than normal, indicating a risk of fractures.
- Hormones: Regulatory substances produced in organisms to stimulate specific cells or tissues into action.
Practice Tips
To effectively utilize shadowing techniques in this lesson, follow these steps:
- Watch the video by Dr. Brenda Lau and listen attentively to her tone, rhythm, and emphasis on key points. Remember, the goal is to mimic her style to sharpen your long-term memory and improve English pronunciation.
- Start by repeating short segments of her speech. Pause the video after each phrase, and attempt to echo her intonation and pace. This will help build your confidence in speaking. Consider using any shadowing site if you prefer structured templates for practice.
- Focus on the context of the vocabulary. For instance, when Dr. Lau discusses "strength," think about what that word means in relation to health and aging. This will deepen your understanding while you practice speaking about significant themes.
- If the video feels fast, try slowing it down using the playback speed settings; this will allow you to catch subtle pronunciations and intonations.
- Practice daily by incorporating these phrases into your conversations. Engage in discussions about health, strength, or mobility with friends or comprehension partners, enhancing your English speaking practice.
With consistent effort using these tips, you will not only develop your vocabulary but also gain the confidence needed to express these complex ideas in English fluidly. Embrace the journey of learning and see your skills flourish with each session!
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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