Shadowing Practice: Neuroscientist: How To Change Your Brain (Andrew Huberman) - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
1
In the health and optimization space now, there's so many tools, right?
2
So what we need and what I try and highlight in the book are principles.
3
High morning cortisol means low nighttime cortisol, means high nighttime melatonin, means great sleep, means better days, and so on and so forth.
4
You're essentially got the gears of the system linking together with that.
5
In 2026, right heading into 2027, I think we pretty well understand the principles of great mental health, physical health, and performance.
6
The real question, I think, is how do we resolve all these tools and contradictions that are out there and put a structure on them?
7
If somebody wants to learn, let's just say if you want to learn, you want to focus and get rid of brain fog, you want to learn.
8
Here are the key steps.
9
You need to focus, obviously, to learn.
10
To focus, you need to be alert.
11
To get alert, there are many things you can do.
12
And I talk about all of them in the book.
13
There are foundational things like sleep, all right, that's going to help you get alert and focused.
14
But there are also things like exercise.
15
We all hear that exercise makes our brain better.
16
It makes us better at learning.
17
Exercise makes you better at learning for two reasons.
18
One, it increases the catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine.
19
So in the four to six hours after exercise, you are more alert and you can focus better, unless you exercise to exhaustion
20
if you have leg day for you know you know 10
21
sets of 10 on the squats followed by a bunch of hamstring work
22
and etc your brain's not going to be so good at focusing
23
but you're going to come out of that more alert
24
because you have more adrenaline in your body more norepinephrine being released in your brain
25
and more dopamine being released in your brain
26
and dopamine is a critical component for learning okay focus then it becomes easier to access.
27
And in your focus, what are you focusing on?
28
You need to focus on making errors through genuine attempts to do something.
29
Something physical, maybe a tennis serve, or you're learning billiards.
30
Something cognitive, you're trying to learn a language.
31
The error between what you currently do and what you're trying to do, the error, is the signal that the neurons, the nerve cells, need to change.
32
It runs through a circuit involving the cerebellum and a bunch of other things, but that gap is what the brain tries to close.
33
If you can do something, there's no reason for your brain to change.
34
And the agitation you feel from those errors reflects elevated levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine in the body and brain respectively.
35
And those literally chemically tag the synapses so that then at night when you sleep,
36
the synapses rearrange and you close the gap between your current ability and the ability you're striving to achieve.
37
That's how it works.
38
So that's how you learn.
39
You have to bring yourself to those points of agitation.
40
I wish I had learned that in the third grade.
41
I wish they had told me that.
42
Now, many people find that they are very disciplined about certain things.
43
They're getting their sets in reps and they're pushed past failure.
44
They love their video games.
45
They love perhaps mathematics, but not literature.
46
The things that we are not facile in that don't come easy to us, there are two reasons to do some of that learning at every stage of life.
47
One is it enriches us.
48
We often find that the things that are hardest to learn that we then learn are the most satisfying.
49
This is the effort that precedes dopamine is far more reinforcing than when just dopamine comes in.
50
Talk to anybody, anyone, and their life experience, if they've had a life, will say something like, oh yeah, everything was going great until this big thing then i overcame
51
that big thing and that was really the thing that taught me
52
that i'm capable of even bigger things right people say is it crossword puzzles
53
if you love doing crossword puzzles guess what my friend you're
54
they're not going to help keep your brain young you got to do the the hard puzzles you know
55
if they're easy for you then it's not going to help
56
you like chess play go you like checkers learn chess
57
because i talk about behavioral tools i would say 80 of behavioral tools
58
And then there's a lot of discussion about pharmacology and supplements, about the pros and cons of everything from nicotine to amphetamines and on and on.
59
But multiple times I mentioned, I think that, you know, nowadays it seems like the are we over -optimizing becomes a big question.
60
I think it's an important question.
61
I mean, to me, optimization is just taking the, like, what do you got today?
62
What's on your plate today?
63
And how do you feel best and do best in that context?
64
And this brings me back to something that I failed to say earlier, which is that top down versus bottom up dynamic tension,
65
morning cortisol high, nighttime cortisol low, physiological size, et cetera.
66
All of those things put you in the best position, put these circuits in the best possible position for you to have a more adaptive,
67
less reactive life, right?
68
To be more aware of the goodness in life and less reactive to the BS that you have no control over, this kind of thing to be less prone to impulse and more prone to focusing on what really motivates you,
69
the people that you love and doing the right things in accordance with that.
70
So I think that one of the most important questions
71
that we should all ask ourselves anytime we want to learn
72
or we want to relax or we want to sleep is ask ourselves, you know, where are we on this continuum of alertness and sleep? As a culture,
73
we've spent a lot of time thinking about kind of the core things like get a good night's sleep
74
because obviously the way I think about sleep and rest is when you're not getting enough or and it's different for everybody.
75
But if you're not getting enough sleep on a regular basis, or you're just too stressed out, it's like the hinge on that seesaw is loose.
76
So it's like you're up, you're down, you're all over the place.
77
And so there's some foundational practices of sleep, hydration, exercise, social connection, good nutrition,
78
whatever that means for the individual that put you in a place to be able to manage things really well.
79
But what we've been talking about up until now are these what I call real -time tools.
80
You know, I love the ice bath.
81
I've done tumor breathing i still do it i really believe
82
it in its virtues there's some good science about how it
83
helps activate the immune system all these other great things
84
but the ability to adjust in real time is what it's about
85
because that's i think where real confidence comes from like you
86
do a lot of public speaking i do a lot of public speaking
87
and there's still days where i'll show up
88
and i'm you know all of a sudden like i'll feel
89
my cheeks getting flush i'm like what's going on i have
90
to be able to adjust in real time yeah it's not
91
sufficient to be like oh you know i'm gonna go meditate for an hour
92
or what did i do wrong the day before
93
and this is what it's it's is a lot like driving
94
a car everyone should know how to manage their internal real estate their mind
95
and their body with do's and don'ts of physical practices of just you know practices with
96
that don't involve ingesting anything it also puts you in a
97
position to better navigate those extreme states right i mean the
98
person who decides to dabble with nicotine like not by smoking but taking nicotine for focus,
99
if you can't handle and manage your mind in a very alert state, it's just going to make things worse.
100
You'll think that you're in a tunnel of focus, but you actually are in a tunnel of high stress and nothing good comes out of that.
101
Whereas if you've already mastered what it is to be really alert and focused, and you want to take that to the next level,
102
and you're an adult and it's appropriate for you and your health status, then you're going get that much more out of it
103
and whereas i think a lot of people look first to
104
like what's the thing i can take it's like well the
105
thing you can take is master your sleep -wake cycle master
106
your moment to moment kind of autonomic regulation this calm down get more alert
107
and do it with some breathing or if you like the ice bath do
108
that or if you um if you want to you know run up a steep hill
109
and then see how quickly you can calm yourself down using
110
double inhale exhale type sign that's cool there's a huge play space
111
that you don't need to take anything
112
and then once you feel like you're working well there well
113
then sure maybe it's appropriate to go down the avenue of you know supplementation or other thing
114
when people are confronted with an anxiety provoking scenario in our case we do this with virtual reality
115
because we need to do it in the laboratory we find
116
that we find their pain point essentially
117
and by pain point I don't mean extreme fear I mean the thing
118
that can raise their autonomic arousal
119
that has them in a mode of considering different options
120
and trying to figure out what is strategic
121
and what they're capable of in
122
that moment could be heights could be confrontation with a predator animal it varies by person to people
123
but everyone has their pain point even uh even navy seals
124
that we brought to the laboratory
125
or other people from the special operations community they all each
126
and everyone has their pain point what they do in response to that pain point is really what's interesting.
127
And what we found was that the pause or freeze response certainly was associated with autonomic arousal, with stress and anxiety.
128
We measure this in the brain and body.
129
And then we found that there were a subset of individuals
130
and animals in the parallel animal work that would confront a fear, not necessarily reflexively, but after some consideration, they would lean into the challenge,
131
essentially confront the thing that was making them feel anxious.
132
And it turned out that
133
that response surprisingly was associated with the highest levels of autonomic
134
arousal there the insula took on essentially a a change in
135
its activity patterns this gamma pattern the heart rate increased breathing increased sweating increased
136
so these are all the marks of an anxiety attack
137
but here if you were to just look at the behavior of the person
138
or the animal what you'd find is
139
that they were marching forward toward their fear one reason to suppress the somatic response the bodily response is
140
that tends to be a unitary interpretation meaning at this moment i feel alert
141
but calm so i feel good
142
but i'm guessing there's a lot of signals coming from the body
143
and in fact there are to my brain
144
but i tend to just say i feel pretty good those tend to be very kind of um binned responses
145
and they're fairly generic you know i guess we can look
146
to some of our podcasting colleagues like the Jocko Willinks or the David Goggins,
147
you know, who are either forcing themselves or are somehow up at 4 .30 in the morning and pushing through that, what I call limbic friction.
148
You know, the limbic system is saying, I'm tired or I'm anxious and going against that.
149
So there's literally a required suppression of the bodily response in order to imagine how we would feel when we complete this.
150
If we want to be very concrete, we should probably focus on actions and i'll use fitness as an example
151
because it translates to everybody whereas you know people's circumstances differ
152
let's say somebody really wants to take on a fitness routine
153
they hate running
154
or they want to lose weight in a in a healthy way this kind of thing
155
so we've all heard the example well you put your shoes
156
by the door on day one day two you put them
157
on day three you go out the door day four you walk around the block
158
and then you know and then eventually like they're running marathons okay great
159
but to sustain that behavior or even to make the the behavior pleasure full
160
and to give you energy the key is to subjectively reward those steps
161
so it's not gonna be let's say I go out
162
and I run a mile
163
and my goal is to run 10 miles in a few
164
weeks the key is as you're in the strain of
165
that mile the hard part you want to tell yourself this is the good part this is the part
166
that gives me energy and I'll be very surprised
167
if people don't actually feel like they could continue further
168
so it's a journey of a thousand miles starts is made up of you know single steps
169
but the key is to reward the harder steps not the easier ones
170
and not the ones where you get the thing
171
that you want find the wall and push a little bit further through
172
that wall and reward
173
that process um in fact i'm not telling people do anything i'm just saying
174
that there's our biology is primarily for taking us through these adventures of arousal
175
and relaxation waking up in the morning is an exercise in autonomic arousal cortisol hits
176
when you wake up boom can you do that without losing your mind
177
and thought and obsession yeah can you put your head down at night
178
and fall asleep without losing your mind in the previous day's events these are skills that we have to cultivate
📺 Same Channel
B21
10 Minutes for the next 10 Years - Matthew McConaughey Motivational Speech
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B13
Advice for students 📚 ✨ ✍️
High School StudentsUniversity Students+1
C15
The Art of Suffering - Jordan Peterson Motivation
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B22
FOCUS ON YOURSELF AND STAY SILENT - Best Motivational Speech | Alex Hormozi
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B28
From NOTHING to OLYMPIC ATHLETE - The Motivational Video that Will Change Your Life
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B12
How Selena Gomez deals with her mental health 📚✨✍️ #motivation #mindset #selenagomez
TeensHigh School Students+3
B23
Hailey Bieber's best life advice for students 📚✨✍️ #haileybieber #motivation #inspiration #advice
High School StudentsUniversity Students+1
C13
J.K. Rowling's Ultimate Advice For Every 20 Year Old | One of the Best Motivational Speeches Ever
University StudentsBusiness English+1
C110
NEUROSCIENTIST - You Will NEVER Lose Motivation AGAIN!
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B21
The Most Valuable 40 Minutes You’ll Hear Today
University StudentsBusiness English+2
C114
Jack Ma's Ultimate Advice for Students & Young People - HOW TO SUCCEED IN LIFE
TeensUniversity Students
C11
STOP WASTING TIME - Part 1 | Motivational Video for Success & Studying (Ft. Coach Hite)
University StudentsWorking Adults
C14
Jordan Peterson: Fix Yourself Before It's Too Late
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B21
DON'T WASTE TIME - Best Study Motivation for Success & Students (Most Eye Opening Video)
High School StudentsUniversity Students+2
B2YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF IN 2025 - Jordan Peterson Motivation
University StudentsBusiness English+1
✨ Recommend Video
C11
107 sentences
How to Quickly Improve Focus - Andrew Huberman
University StudentsBusiness English+1
C154
50 sentences
Psychology of Intelligence: Learn Faster Than Everyone Around You
University StudentsBusiness English+1
C11
164 sentences
The Neuroscience of Confidence: How to Rewire Your Brain
University StudentsBusiness English+1
C17
69 sentences
Your Phone Is Training Your Brain to Lose Focus | Dr. Andrew Huberman & Joe Rogan
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B22
23 sentences
Neuroscientist: Visualization technique to achieve ALL your goals
University StudentsBusiness English+1
C16
208 sentences
Why You Need to Read Hard Books
University StudentsBusiness English+1
C12
508 sentences
Essentials: How to Assess & Improve All Aspects of Your Fitness | Dr. Andy Galpin
University StudentsBusiness English+1
C12
71 sentences
The Habits That Keep Your Brain Sharp | Dr. Sanjay Gupta - World Governments Summit
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B21
98 sentences
the ultimate guide to brainmaxxing.
University StudentsBusiness English+1
C1582 sentences
The Only 38 Minutes You Need To Take Back Control Of Your Mind | Andrew Huberman Motivation
University StudentsBusiness English+1
C15
342 sentences
Control Your Brain Chemistry for Focus, Motivation & Well-Being | Huberman Lab Essentials
University StudentsBusiness English+1
C136
208 sentences
These 7 Daily Habits Are Reshaping Your Brain Right Now
University StudentsBusiness English+1
What You'll Learn
This video helps build three key speaking skills: explaining complex ideas clearly (great for IELTS speaking practice), using causal connectors ("because," "so that") to link thoughts, and maintaining a steady pace during extended explanations. These skills are critical for english speaking practice and real-world communication.
Listen For These Sounds
Notice connected speech patterns like "got the gears" (linking "got" and "the") and "what we need" (reducing "what we" to "wuh we"). The speaker often shortens "you are" to "you're" and "it is" to "it's," which are common in natural speech. These reductions help you follow fast-paced dialogue, a must for learn english with videos.
Say It Like a Native
Mirror the speaker's rhythm by stressing key terms: "principles," "alert," "errors," and "dopamine." Pause slightly before big ideas (e.g., "The real question, I think, is...") to create emphasis. For shadow speech practice, repeat phrases like "the error between what you currently do and what you're trying to do" to mimic the rising intonation on "error" and "trying." Use a shadowing site to record yourself and compare pacing—this trains your brain to match native flow.
Practice Tip
Focus on 30-second clips: first listen, then repeat immediately (shadowing). This builds muscle memory for natural speech. For IELTS speaking practice, practice explaining the "error learning" concept in your own words—use the video's structure ("one reason... another reason...") to organize your thoughts. Consistent english speaking practice with such videos turns complex ideas into fluent speech.
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.