Shadowing Practice: Andrew Huberman on God, Prayer & Finding Peace at 50 - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The one thing that I wish that I had done earlier was to stop resisting the voice in my head that said, you know, I think there's a God and I'm going to pray.
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I just kept pushing down and yet at the same time wishing for it.
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I'm 50 and for the first time in my life, my entire life, I've experienced sustained time of real deep peace.
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One of the reasons I'm so interested in spirituality and notions of God, etc., is that you know, the virtues also, I believe,
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can start to arrive through things that are outside of us.
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Now, I realize that sounds very unscientific, but if you look at the science around religious belief
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or belief in higher power or the notion that humans don't have all the answers, not even the collective consciousness,
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what you find is that for everything from recovery from addiction to recovery from immense, immense loss, I mean, the kinds of losses
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that go way beyond uh you know a death of a
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family member although that's intense almost without fail moving through
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that with any kind of sense of self -preservation
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and not engaging in just self -destruction almost always involves some
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notion of top -down control from outside you know being encouraged
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or even instructed to do the right thing feeling as
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if something is coming through oneself it's as if the top -down control is so immense,
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like the going against oneself that's required is so immense that when people hand that over to God, whether or not it's Christ or whether or not some other form of God,
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it seems as if they get some relief from the process, and yet it's very effective.
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And you can't deny this, right, just as a phenomenon.
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I mean, let's take off our hats as scientists and people kind of parse things.
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Like, how could it be the thing that's hardest for humans to do for themselves becomes far easier
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when they stop trying to do it for themselves.
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It's a wild mind bend that neuroscience doesn't really understand.
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But, you know, what we're really talking about, let's say this were alcohol, and I'm not an alcoholic, fortunately, but let's say I had immense difficulty in refraining from alcohol,
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and this would be the precise environment and where this would, where alcohol would be attractive.
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The amount of top -down control that's required is immense for somebody that's recently sober.
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They have to, you know, hopefully they're 12 -step, they have to call their sponsor.
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It can be a jarring anxiety.
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That anxiety eventually subsides.
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I mean, alcoholics eventually can hang out in bars and not have a drink, but there's a long period of time where they can, and many never will be able to do that.
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But the notion of a higher power is central to almost every alcoholic, at least who goes through AA, getting sober.
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It's almost a prerequisite.
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And in some sense, it is a prerequisite.
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And it's so brilliant that it is
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because it takes away the need for constant top -down control you give
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that over to something else this notion of a higher power
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for some people that's god for some people's christ for some people it's you know just general higher power
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because 12 step is very agnostic as to you know what people consider higher power
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but i think it is not a coincidence
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that the bible writes in these kinds of things about sins
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and virtues and the need not just good works but avoiding sin
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and acknowledges in some sense
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that in some cases near impossible for people to do on their own
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and yes community can help and yes reward processes can help
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and yes punishment can help these all work we know this
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you see this in animal learning studies where humans are different is
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that they can as far as we know humans are unique
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in their ability to give this top -down restriction process over to some other entity
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and it makes it easier not harder I've seen it help
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so many people
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and you know I don't I won't be shy about it's
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helped me tremendously I mean I'm in a very serious prayer
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practice daily now every night before I go to sleep without
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fail I'm going on a couple years now where I've not missed a single night I'll get out of bed
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if I fall asleep and do that it's it's it's like uh
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and then also just prayer as a thing and let's say it's just purely neurobiological.
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Let's say there's nothing outside of us in the real sense.
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I don't believe that, but let's just assume for a moment.
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Well, then my neurobiology seems to be responding to all this very, very well.
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And I don't think I'm alone with that. In fact, I think there are too many burdens in life for anyone
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to be able to navigate life extremely well without these notions of higher power.
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I don't think people can do it.
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And you could show me the most successful, wealthiest people in the world, and I would say, yeah, but they are highly deficient in this area.
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Not because i'm judging them right we're all deficient in some area
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but um i it must be it has to be
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because there's this huge gap in the in in the knowledge set i just hit 50 recently
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and and i will say um
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if i look back on my life the one thing
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that i wish that i had done earlier was to stop resisting the voice in my head
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that said you know i think i think there's a god and i'm gonna to pray.
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I kept pushing
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that away it was like incompatible with my notion of what
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it meant to be a scientist it was just incompatible with with things i just kept pushing down
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and yet at the same time wishing for it i'm 50
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and for the first time in my life my entire life
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i've experienced sustained time of real deep peace like just peace
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like just the like everything's okay everything is as it should be not just some little mantra
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that you say when you're on the big circus like
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and why i think it's because i stopped fighting
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so hard to try and control everything inside me
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and in my life and as a consequence everything has become much easier it's still challenging
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but much much easier and it's 100
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because of giving over to notion of higher power i'm very
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direct about it's god higher power for me reading the bible
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this kind of thing prayer i mean these are practices this isn't just I believe in God.
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These are practices.
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Those are faith -based practices.
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And it's become a source of immense intellectual stimulation for me and also just relaxation.
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And it's really, it's my wish for anyone that's like struggling or doing well, because I'm certain that it holds so much power.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Andrew Huberman on God, Prayer & Finding Peace at 50”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: notion, higher, immense. This video has 88 sentences and 1175 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:17. The speaker talks fast, about 187 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| notion noun | /ˈnoʊʃən/ | Mental apprehension of whatever may be known, thought, or imagined; idea, concept. |
| immense adjective | /ɪˈmɛns/ | Huge, gigantic, very large. |
| prayer noun | /pɹɛɚ/ | A practice of communicating with one's God, or with some spiritual entity. |
| alcoholic noun | /ˌæl.kəˈhɔ.lɪk/ | A person who is addicted to alcohol. |
| belief noun | /bɪˈliːf/ | Mental acceptance of a claim as true. |
| anxiety noun | /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/ | An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event. |
| pray verb | /pɹeɪ/ | To direct words, thoughts, or one's attention to a deity or any higher being, for the sake of adoration, thanks, petition for help, etc. |
| scientist noun | /ˈsaɪəntəst/ | One whose activities make use of the scientific method to answer questions regarding the measurable universe. A scientist may be involved in original research… |
| resist verb | /ɹɪˈzɪst/ | To attempt to counter the actions or effects of. |
| sober adjective | /ˈsoʊ.bɚ/ | Not drunk; not intoxicated. |
| virtue noun | /ˈvɝt͡ʃu/ | The idea of all that is good or excellent (in every sense of those terms) in a human being, collectively instantiated by a varying number of human traits known… |
| sustain verb | /səˈsteɪn/ | To maintain, or keep in existence. |
| encourage verb | /ɪnˈkʌɹ.ɪd͡ʒ/ | To mentally support; to motivate, give courage, hope or spirit. |
| intense adjective | /ɪnˈtɛns/ | Of a characteristic: extreme or very high or strong in degree; severe; also, excessive, towering. |
| arrive verb | /əˈɹaɪv/ | To reach; to get to a certain place. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| push down verb | To force downwards (literally or figuratively). | |
| come through verb | To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway. | |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| take away verb | /ˌteɪk əˈweɪ/ | To remove something and put it in a different place. |
| take off verb | To remove. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 31 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: notion /ˈnoʊʃən/, destruction /dɪsˈtɹʌkʃən/, punishment /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/, addiction /əˈdɪkˌʃən/, consciousness /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/
- Long words — get the stress right: alcoholic /ˌæl.kəˈhɔ.lɪk/, anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, difficulty /ˈdɪfɪkəlti/, intellectual /ˌɪntəˈlɛkt͡ʃʊəl/, phenomenon /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like notion, immense, prayer.
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.