Shadowing Practice: how to be calm | becoming your own safe place - Learn English Speaking with Video

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hello my love welcome to another cozy wonderful video of mine where i share my tips

and practices that help me embody

that grounded version of myself more today is a very hot summer evening

and i'm sweating profoundly but nevertheless i do enjoy the weather quite a lot

and i do hope that you are having a wonderful day

or had a wonderful day wherever you are now people with

whom i interact with in my daily life often tell me how calming they find my presence to be.

However, this was not always the case and

that is why I'm making this video to show you too

that you can certainly embody this calm and grounded version of yourself if you desire to do so.

A version of yourself that is unfazed by the life's currents

and all of the different aspects of stress and frustration that may come to you throughout your life.

Now, I actually used to allow myself to be steered by my emotions or life circumstances quite a lot,

especially because I did grow up in a toxic household in which I spent 18 years of my life, so I was just constantly exposed to very stressful environments in

which I often felt myself losing control over my own self

or allow myself to be consumed fully by these situations that were happening to me.

But throughout my healing journey, as I focused on becoming my own inner safe space and on becoming my own inner anchor that I can lean onto, I actually discovered quite a few practices

that allowed me to find this inner calmness inside of myself that I would love to share with you too.

Growing up in a toxic household meant that the circumstances that you were living in were very unstable, they felt very unsafe.

And these outer circumstances also started to reflect on my inner world.

And at some point, I was just truly tired of constantly being pushed and pulled from one emotion to the next, feeling not only unsafe in the environment that I was living in,

but also starting to feel unsafe in my own body.

And because of that, I wanted to figure myself out better.

I wanted to understand what it is about these emotions that makes me want to move with them.

What it is about this state that leaves me so anxious and stressed.

So what I started to do was in moments after verbally abusive arguments

and having all of this frustration inside of me after many heavy situations, I would actually sit down to journal.

Writing about these situations helped me to gain distance to them to then look at them from a different perspective.

And I would have this sort of checklist at some point after doing this for multiple times.

I would go through each of these questions

that I had in my mind and make sure

that I linger in each question for as long as it feels needed of me to do so.

Now at this point I do want to mention that I am not an expert.

I'm just giving advice from my own personal journey

and sharing the tips and practices that helped me and hopes

that they can be of some use to you as well but

if at any moment you don't feel comfortable with any of

these practices please do not feel pressured into doing these things if they do not feel right to you.

I know that people often tell you to not listen to sad music

and to not linger too much in negative emotions

but I feel like with this you are rather pushing your emotions away instead of actually processing them

and going through them to also be able to truly and fully move on from the situation.

So going back to this checklist that I would have, I would first start with the question, what happened?

I would make sure that I would write down every single thing

that comes to my mind that I feel like is important to mention.

Then I moved on to the question on how it made me feel.

How did the words that this person told me affect me and how am I feeling now after this argument?

And from this question I moved straight into the next one which was why did it make me feel that way?

Now this was the part in my journaling session where I

would most of the time just cry without an end

but I would still continue to write and sometimes I would even listen to

sad music to allow me to truly get into the state of this emotion

that I was feeling so that I can explore it fully and look at it from all the different aspects.

And I would definitely say that this is the most important question to answer during this whole journaling session, because it helps you not only process the situation,

but also understand yourself better and understand why you reacted the way that you did.

And this also helps you to detect your own triggers

and see what there is about certain interactions or about certain moments that just triggers these kinds of emotions inside of yourself,

which I think is a very profound insight to have.

I would write for as long as it felt right to me, and most of the times that meant that I wrote till I got into this sort of state of feeling empty,

of feeling like I put down everything that I needed to onto paper.

It's similar to those moments of, you know, when you just cried for hours without an end,

you at some point come to this state where there's this sort of emptiness inside of you, which sounds very negative, but I mean it in the most positive way possible.

It's like you've just put down and freed yourself of every single thought

that you have that was occupying your mind from the situation, and that is always the state that I kind of tried to get myself into.

That was the moment when I knew that now I have processed the situation fully.

Once I had reached this state, I moved on to the last question, which was what can I learn from this.

And this doesn't have to be anything major.

Like sometimes after heavy arguments with my family, I would just write down that I need to talk less with my family members.

And that was it.

It's not about forcing yourself to think positively, but more about seeing if there's something that you could learn from this.

Is there something that you could use to your advantage from this situation?

We often tend to push ourselves into just one perspective and sometimes

we just missed a major lesson that may have come from this

and with this question you just simply give it space

but you certainly do not always need to have an answer to it.

And now during these journaling sessions I then had one major realization which allows us to move into the next tip.

Now every time I would go through this process of having to live in a toxic household,

going through these heavy arguments and then journaling about them later on and repeating this process multiple times over and over again,

I started to notice one profound thing.

If you close your eyes and look within yourself, you will notice this sort of warmth within yourself.

It's like a weight and it's hard to describe, but I hope that if you just close your eyes right now

and just try to look within and see what there is without trying to judge it too much, I'm sure that you will meet your own inner self, if that makes sense.

I personally love to think of it as it being my this inner warmth

that you're feeling within yourself that allows you to move this body, that allows you to move throughout this life.

So as I was going through this nerve-wracking process of living

in these circumstances to then constantly be involved in different kinds of situations that make you feel angry,

frustrated, or stressed, to then also journal about them, I noticed that this inner force that you're feeling within yourself always stays the same.

And that became my own inner anchor.

This inner energy, this inner you that you're feeling is untouchable no matter what situation you are in, no matter what emotions you're experiencing,

or no matter what happens to you.

This inner warmth that you're feeling inside of yourself, even right now, will always stay unchanged and it will always be there.

And that is what I started to focus on as I was going through this very heavy process of

living in the circumstances of this toxic household.

And that just showed me that any outer circumstances that I was going through cannot define me as a person.

They cannot define and never take away my worth.

And that was how I was able to become my own inner anchor in a way, because that showed me that my inner state,

my world, my soul stays untouched no matter what happens to me, which for me just invites in that calmness into my being,

that I know that I will still be there no matter what happens to me.

But to be able to experience this inner calmness within yourself, you also need to be able to establish a loving and caring relationship with your own self.

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Once you establish this relationship and you can then lean back onto yourself at any time

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because you do know that you will not abandon yourself, that is the time when most of your worries,

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most the things that you stress about will simply lose their meaning not in the sense of that they will stop existing, but once you know that you have your own self,

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that you will hold your own self no matter what happens to you, you lose all of the fear and stress and anxiety that you have around certain situations so for example for me,

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as i was going through this heavy phase of realizing and grieving over the family that i never got to have, i went through heavy phases of anger, frustration and sadness

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but at some point i just kind of had this question come into my mind, where I asked myself, well, if everyone around me has completely abandoned me, why should I do the same?

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Back then I didn't even have an answer to this question, but by simply having this question come to my mind and be there in the room with me,

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something clicked inside of me and I thought, you know, it is unfair what's happening to me,

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I feel unfairly treated, but does that mean that I should abandon myself as well?

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Or should I rather prioritize this loving and gentle relationship between myself

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and make sure that I become my own inner anchor to lean onto.

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Make sure that I am the one that will definitely not abandon myself

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because this is something that I always wish to have.

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To put it simply, I wanted to prove to myself

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that I am worthy and deserving of this love that I crave to experience.

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And just because the people around me failed me does not mean that I'm not worthy of love.

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And I wanted to prove it to myself by establishing a very radically self-loving relationship to my own self

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and with achieving this, every other interaction or any other relationship

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that i had with the people around me kind of became less important, but in a very good way i was no longer entertaining this need

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and desire to prove to my family that i am deserving of the love

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that i want to receive because i had built it for myself

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and the same applies to the other relationship throughout my daily life

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that i was choosing if somebody treats you wrong and and you have a very self-loving relationship towards yourself, you have no problem stepping away from situations that are not benefiting you.

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You have no problem of taking yourself away and out of toxic situations

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because you have yourself and you know that you are complete

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and whole as you are right in this moment

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and you do not need to have it approved by other people

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or be seen by other people in the first place life from

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that point on just becomes so fun and playful in a way

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because you just have this mindset of whatever will happen i know

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that i can lean back onto myself and i know

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that i will lovingly hold my own hand

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and get through the situation no matter what so what's the fuss about? you know, like why should i worry about the situation

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if i will make it out anyways and probably learn even more about myself?

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so at that point it's basically a win-win situation with this playfulness

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and with this fun that comes into your life through that, you immediately become more calmer and more grounded within your own self because of that,

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i was then able to look at the different situations that upset me from a different angle, from a different perspective there's another deeply profound thing that I realized.

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Which is to realize that there are no failures in life.

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And once you truly understand and embody this mindset shift, you basically somehow become undefeatable.

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Because all of the fears, stress, and anxiety that you feel about different kinds of situations will simply cease to exist.

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Because you know, no matter what happens to you, no matter what you go through, it will always be in full alignment for your own self.

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It will always only be beneficial to you and for your own development.

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And having proof of this in your own life is what will also allow you to ground into this belief even more, which will then allow you to cultivate this calmness within yourself

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because you do understand that nothing that is meant for you will ever pass you and no matter what option you choose, it will always be the best one for you,

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even if it does not feel like that in that moment.

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A few years ago, I dropped out of university

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because of my mental health issues and I just felt like I had completely failed in life.

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I was deeply ashamed of myself, especially when I was comparing myself to the people around me.

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I had people around me that were going to university, finishing their major, and having these wonderful job opportunities,

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and other people that chose vocational trainings but were now earning money and buying their first own cars.

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And in the middle of it all, there I was, freshly dropped out of university, and I cannot even go grocery shopping without falling into a panic attack.

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And in fact, if I wouldn't have dropped out of university, I wouldn't have gone through these different situations in my life

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that allowed me to be in this place where I am today.

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If I wouldn't have dropped out of university, I wouldn't have gone to travels.

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And if I wouldn't have dropped out of university, I wouldn't have found my actual dream career that I am working now as.

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And now, lastly, build a daily reset routine for yourself.

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Look for practices in your daily life

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that make you feel like you now have a clean slate to work with

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and make sure that you come back to them on a daily basis.

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For me personally, it's meditation, writing, and yoga, but it can be anything for you.

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It can be writing, it can be running, it can be working out, but also simply spending time with your loved ones.

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With this, you prevent your stress to accumulate itself until at some point you simply burst, but rather you come back in a daily sequence

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and allow the little amounts of stress that have accumulated themselves to be built away and released.

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And now with that, I do hope that these tips can be of some use to you.

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And of course, there are many more things that I would love to share, but my phone is not having it today.

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I'm running out of storage, so I do hope these tips are enough for now and I'm wishing you a wonderful day wherever you are.

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126 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “how to be calm”. This video has 165 sentences and 2787 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:24. The speaker talks fast, about 208 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
emotion noun	/ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/	A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data.
circumstance noun	/ˈsɝ.kəmˌstæns/	Something which is related to, or in some way affects, a fact or event.
distress noun	/dɪˈstɹɛs/	Physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature.
calmness noun	/ˈkɑ(l)mnəs/	The state of being calm; tranquillity; silence.
anchor noun	/ˈæŋ.kəː/	A tool used to moor a vessel to the bottom of a sea or river to resist movement.
abandon verb	/əˈbæn.dən/	To give up or relinquish control of, to surrender or to give oneself over, or to yield to one's emotions.
lean verb	/ˈliːn/	To incline, deviate, or bend, from a vertical position; to be in a position thus inclining or deviating.
embody verb	/ɪmˈbɒdi/	To represent in a physical or concrete form; to incarnate or personify.
unsafe adjective	/ʌnˈseɪf/	Not safe (various senses); dangerous.
warmth noun	/wɔɹmθ/	A moderate degree of heat; the sensation of being warm.
profound adjective	/pɹəˈfaʊnd/	Descending far below the surface; opening or reaching to great depth; deep.
frustration noun	/fɹʌsˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/	The feeling of annoyance at impossibility from resistance or inability to achieve something.
accumulate verb	/əˈkjuːmjʊˌleɪt/	To heap up in a mass; to pile up; to collect or bring together (either literally or figuratively), often gradually and without active intent.
checklist noun	/ˈt͡ʃɛklɪst/	A list of tasks to be completed, names to be consulted, conditions to be verified and similar.
linger verb	/ˈlɪŋɡɚ/	To stay or remain in a place or situation, especially as if unwilling to depart or not easily able to do so.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
put down verb		To insult, belittle, or demean.
write down verb		To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something.
get through verb	/ɡɛt ˈθɹu/	To overcome; to endure.
go back to verb		To stem from; to originate in.
take away verb	/ˌteɪk əˈweɪ/	To remove something and put it in a different place.
work out verb	/ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/	To calculate.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is unfazed · be steered · be consumed
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've just put · have processed · have accumulated
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	one which was · question, which was · more, which will

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 22 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, wouldn't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, frustration /fɹʌsˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/, freshly /ˈfɹɛʃli/, realization /ˌɹɪə.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, meditation /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/
Long words — get the stress right: accumulate /əˈkjuːmjʊˌleɪt/, prioritize /pɹaɪˈɒɹ.ə.taɪz/, undefeatable /ˌʌndəˈfiːtəbəl/, untouchable /ʌnˈtʌtʃəbəl/, realization /ˌɹɪə.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/

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 emotion, circumstance, distress.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: how to be calm | becoming your own safe place - Learn English Speaking with Video

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