Shadowing Practice: How to Learn to Let Go Before It's Too Late | Pema Chödrön - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Do you have an intuition or a sense of what the whole entire shebang is up to here?
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What the whole universe is up to?
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I have no idea.
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I have no idea.
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Now, you mentioned, Anipema, that all of us will have this opportunity for merging at the time of our death.
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And you also said that a way we can touch that
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while we're alive is looking and feeling the infinity of the sky, daylight sky, night sky.
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How else can we practice and prepare?
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we do to prepare ourselves in the midst of our daily life for
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that moment at the time of our death so
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that we don't miss it well one way first of all
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is to prepare yourself for the fear experience you know fear
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of the unknown the like total panic i don't know how much you've been with dying people
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but people can die when they just relax and let go and they can die very afraid
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and like screaming as if they're about to be thrown into a dark pit you know
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and so so so that's one way right to work with
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that which obscures does that make sense it does yeah so
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and the other way is to um well one of the things
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that that i teach is a pause called the pause practice
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and i teach it a lot so i've gotten a lot of feedback about it
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and so forth but basically like let's just use an example, you're out for a walk by yourself.
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And generally speaking, we go for a walk by ourselves and we're having an internal conversation, right?
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So then you intentionally, some people do it with something on their watch or something makes a little sound.
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And Thich Nhat Hanh used to do it with a mindfulness bell.
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You just pause and there's like maybe a couple of breaths or just a moment of just looking out.
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And then you just go on with your walk and then you again realize you're just, you're not really there and then you intentionally pause.
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And these pauses, initially, they can be really short,
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like that, you know, maybe a little longer than that like
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but you want it short enough that the mind doesn't start talking, commenting.
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But then as people do it a lot throughout their day, then they find that it can be, they can extend that clause.
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And it's like some people describe it as like like silence, a kind of silence.
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Some people just, even though there's noises going on, other people describe it as emerging.
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Other people describe it as just deeply relaxing, intimate with sounds and sights.
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But it's like a kind of obvious, you're walking along and you pause and you say,
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oh, I didn't even notice that the wind was blowing the grass.
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I didn't even notice how beautiful the clouds are today.
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You know it's like coming into the moment.
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That's training in for death and life of course.
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Okay I have a big question for you.
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Yeah.
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Which is you know I'm getting a feeling in our conversation about this sort of individual arc.
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And of course, the individual is moving out of the cocoon into this infinite space.
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But do you have a intuition or a sense of what the whole entire shebang is up to here?
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What the whole universe is up to?
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all of space what's it up to
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and what's it up to us through us as humans what's going on at that level
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i have no idea i have no idea i have no idea i i'm i'm assuming your question probably comes from
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talking to a lot of people about about
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that topic well i'm interested is the universe evolving growing in love in some way our activity is part of
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that is there some grander sense of purpose
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or directionality kind of anything like that yeah yeah larger scale
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so yeah so uh maybe i don't know if you'll agree with this
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but that all sounds so conceptual to me like it's pretty dreamy out there.
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I'm pretty out there.
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Human minds trying to explain or glamorize or whatever, you know, and I
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it's like trying to make a meaning out of it
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or make it fit into some kind of scheme or something like that.
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And I think that's kind of so human, you know, human.
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It's so not infinite.
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I don't know how to put it.
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But it seems to me that it's trying to get comfort again by something to hold on to.
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That's kind of how it strikes me.
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Now, of course, someone might have the actual experience of this.
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But then I would say that all that you're describing there,
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with them trying to put something indescribable to describe something indescribable,
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and coming up with their own ideas of what it all means and how it's all happening,
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I find it kind of counter-awakening in a kind of way.
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like getting stuck at a kind of higher level of realization or something,
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but still stuck because you're holding on to some kind of image of how things are.
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So to me, it's better to say, wow, it is a real mystery,
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and it's completely unconditioned and not graspable, and you can't pin it down, and we don't know what's happening.
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I go that direction more, you know, more and more in the groundless direction, more and more in the groundless direction.
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But that's not to say if you said what's the use of a human life in terms of all of this,
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I would say that would be to one person at a time overcome the illusion of separateness,
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you know, and let your heart grow bigger and bigger for people
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and with people and for all of us to the capacity to love and care,
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have tenderness, like live in a way that we bring those capacities out for each other.
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This I would definitely say.
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And I would say I spend my life doing that actually, you know, that's kind of like my job description, you might say, in the sense of what I really care about.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Learn to Let Go Before It's Too Late”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: pause, sense, describe, sound. This video has 81 sentences and 1074 words to shadow. The speech runs for 8:03. The speaker talks at a steady 133 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 86% 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
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| pause noun | /pɔːz/ | A temporary stop or rest; an intermission of action; interruption; suspension; cessation. |
| groundless adjective | /ˈɡɹaʊndləs/ | Without any grounds to support it; baseless. |
| indescribable adjective | /ɪndɪˈskɹaɪbəbl̩/ | Impossible (or very difficult) to describe. |
| shebang noun | /ʃɪˈbæŋ(ɡ)/ | Any matter of present concern; thing; or business; most commonly in the phrase the whole shebang. |
| intuition noun | /ˌɪn.tjuːˈɪʃ.ən/ | Immediate cognition without the use of conscious rational processes. |
| intentionally adverb | /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/ | In an intentional manner; on purpose. |
| infinite adjective | /ˈɪnfɪnɪt/ | Indefinably large, countlessly great; immense. |
| awaken verb | /əˈweɪkən/ | To cause to become awake. |
| cocoon noun | /kəˈkuːn/ | The silky case spun by the larvae of some insects in which they metamorphose, protecting the pupa within. |
| directionality noun | The condition of being directional. | |
| docuseries noun | /ˌdɑ.kjəˈsɪɹ.iz/ | A documentary, or a collection of documentaries, presented as a series. |
| dreamy adjective | /ˈdɹiː.mi/ | As in a dream; resembling a dream. |
| glamorize verb | To make or give the appearance of being glamorous. | |
| graspable adjective | Able to be grasped | |
| inward adjective | /ˈɪnwəd/ | Situated on the inside; that is within, inner; belonging to the inside. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
| look out verb | To be vigilant and aware often as an imperative to alert a person to danger. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- How else can we practice and prepare?
- You know it's like coming into the moment.
- I don't know how to put it.
- That's kind of how it strikes me.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 26 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shebang /ʃɪˈbæŋ(ɡ)/, intuition /ˌɪn.tjuːˈɪʃ.ən/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, realization /ˌɹɪə.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/
- Long words — get the stress right: indescribable /ɪndɪˈskɹaɪbəbl̩/, intuition /ˌɪn.tjuːˈɪʃ.ən/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, docuseries /ˌdɑ.kjəˈsɪɹ.iz/, 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.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like pause, groundless, indescribable.
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.