Shadowing Practice: How to Quiet Your Mind (Without Trying) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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If you ever find that your mind gets the best of you, like it's really hard to calm your mind down,

then this video is for you because I'm going to discuss some really good strategies,

some almost foolproof ways that have helped me calm a chaotic or anxious mind,

an overwhelmed, stressed out mind.

And it might not be necessarily what you think.

I think a lot of times people are like, oh, well, you know, the chaos of the mind almost compels them to act or do something.

And don't get me wrong, that can work sometimes.

I'm a big believer that sometimes taking an action step is actually what limits anxiety.

So there's nuance to this for sure.

but if that's not the case

if it's not necessarily taking an action step on something

that you've been putting off or something that you feel like you're procrastinating on

or whatever then this is the strategy that I've used

and I would recommend it's not necessarily easy but it's worked for me

and I do feel like many things

that I talk about on this channel it is like a muscle that you can strengthen within yourself.

And the more you practice it, the stronger this muscle becomes, the better you get at this.

And it happens much quicker.

So what I've come to realize is that quite often when we have this chaos of the mind, we're overwhelmed, we're stressed, we're fearful,

we're in this fight or flight state.

we want to quiet the mind

so we we try to quiet it we're like hey I don't want to think that

and in trying to stop the mind with the mind with

thinking we actually are creating more thought it's like you're you're adding more into the the equation

and you don't want anything in the equation.

You're trying to get rid of the equation altogether.

So what I've realized is trying to think, trying not to think, resisting thinking, wishing that you weren't thinking,

wishing that you did have a quiet mind.

It's like it turns up the volume of your mind.

Imagine if you heard music and you're like, man, I wish there wasn't this music right now.

It's just, it's really bothering me

or like there's like a some sort of noise in the background if you're doing something

and you're like I just don't want

that to be the case what you focus on expands the the more

that you focus on how badly you don't want

that music to be playing or

that noise in the background be playing the more prominent it's

going to become in your awareness the louder it's going to seem in your mind it didn't get any louder

but that's what you're tuning into that's where you're putting your attention

so if you put your attention on something

that you don't want you're like oh man I really don't

want to be thinking these thoughts again it's like turning up

the volume it's like shining a spotlight directly on the things

that you don't want to be experiencing whereas take the noise for example

if you can sit with yourself and the noise is there the noise is there

but there's also a lot of other things going on too

around you it's like oh maybe I'll pay attention I'll broaden my scope of awareness

because right now it's like a like a fine it's like

a needle it's like it's precision it's like I'm focused on this one thing

but what happens if I broaden my awareness and broaden my field of vision.

And I look at the whole room I'm in, or I look at what's going on outside of me.

I pay attention to the space, the empty space in the room, or maybe some other noises or whatever.

But either way, I'm broadening my awareness.

Immediately, it dilutes the noise.

You're not as focused on it because it's not as concentrated.

Your focus is not as concentrated on it.

So immediately when you broaden your focus, it dilutes that one stimulus that you're focused on or

that you were focused on that was taking up space in your mind.

The same is true with our thoughts.

A lot of times when we're thinking something or feeling something that we don't want to be feeling,

we focus on that and how uncomfortable it is, how dissatisfying it is, how frustrating it is or scary or whatever.

That's what we focus on.

And it's like focusing on that one thing and shining a spotlight on the one thing you don't want to be seeing.

What happens if you turn on the lights as a whole?

Not just the spotlight, you turn on all the lights.

Now you see everything.

You pay attention to your whole body.

You bring awareness to the inner spaciousness inside your mind.

You stop resisting the thinking.

It essentially comes down to, can you sit with yourself in stillness?

This is the practice that has helped me.

Sit with myself in stillness or go for a walk.

sometimes working out helps too.

But what it is, is it's not engaging with the mind anymore.

It's either being still with my body or moving slowly, mindfully walking.

Because when I can do that, I bring my awareness into my body.

And I'm no longer, my awareness is no longer concentrated on my mind.

What's going on there?

So again, it's like broadening the awareness and then this becomes more diluted It kind of goes to the background

But it's the the key piece is not resisting it Because when we resist the mind when we resist anything

The harder it becomes the more it actually persists in our awareness

So it's broadening your awareness and coming back into your body in stillness and not resisting it,

allowing it to be, and knowing it will pass.

Nothing lasts forever.

This too shall pass.

Whatever you're experiencing will pass, but in being with it and allowing it to be without resistance and in awareness,

your mind naturally calms down and you return to yourself.

And when I say yourself, I don't mean your self -concept and all the thoughts

and emotions that then I concepts

that make you think that's what you are it's the awareness behind those things you return to awareness

when you are with stillness

and again stillness doesn't have to be necessarily I'm sitting still you could be in stillness

and still walk go for a walk you could be in stillness at any point in time it's a state of consciousness,

not entirely what your body's doing.

Although I've found that being still helps.

When my body is still and I bring awareness to my body as a whole, my entire being, mentally, emotionally,

physically, that's when things start to calm down because I'm not reacting to my dysregulated nervous system.

And one of the symptoms of that dysregulated nervous system is the chaotic,

stressed out, anxious mind that needs to figure things out and force things and try and,

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you know, just make everything work now.

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It's living from that place only adds more to that equation.

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Like I said, it only adds fuel to that fire.

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If you want to stop the fire from burning, you have to let it burn.

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You have to just have to let it go.

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Sometimes trying to, you know, meddle with it, sometimes trying to blow it out only fans the fire.

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You see that?

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Like sometimes trying to meddle with it is the worst thing you can do.

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Whereas if you can let it sit and be with

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that fire burning inside yourself and inside your mind and be in awareness, observing it without resistance, it naturally,

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you come back into balance within yourself

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and the the the quicker you can come into this place within yourself the quicker you reach that state of inner peace.

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A really good analogy I like when it comes to resistance is

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and letting go is if you saw the first Harry Potter movie when Ron,

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Hermione and Harry are trying to get to the Philosopher's Stone I think it was

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and they had to go through all these things

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these different obstacles and one of the obstacles was there's this like plant and They got trapped in this plant.

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It was kind of sucking them

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In and they were stuck it was getting really tight around their necks and stuff like that Oh, you know that freaked me out.

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So of course Ron is like squirming around and losing his mind and And he's stuck there.

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And it starts gripping him tighter and tighter.

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And Hermione was just completely relaxed and allowed herself to be in that situation.

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and the plant just released her.

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She fell right down through the floor.

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And then Harry, he was kind of in between the two of them.

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At first he was struggling, and she's like, you guys need to relax.

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So Harry just calmed down, relaxed, stopped squirming, boom, fell through.

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Took Ron a little bit more time.

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Same is true with us in life, with resisting our mind, resisting emotions, resisting this human experience.

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trying to fight it trying to fight your emotions

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and your mind with your mind is like being in

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that plant and trying to struggle it's like it has a tighter grip on you

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and the more suffering we actually create for ourselves but

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if you can relax like they did in

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that movie in harry potter you realize

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that much quicker it can it can be like that you can just let yourself be

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but if you try to get to that point

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if you try to say okay I need to I need to relax

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so I can get there you're still resisting non -resistance isn't

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about trying to get somewhere it's about letting go of needing to be anywhere

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and just being with in presence with what you're experiencing

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that is a one of the most valuable things I've learned

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when it comes to regulating myself whenever I'm feeling any type of way, stressed out or sad or anxious.

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It doesn't mean that everything's always going to be perfect.

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Like we experience emotions.

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That's not a bad thing.

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It's how much do I want to create more suffering for myself?

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And we can get caught up in that way of thinking.

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So if you find that this is something that you deal with and you struggle with sometimes,

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this is a strategy that has helped me and I hope it can help you too is to just to recap

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broaden your awareness relax within yourself within non -resistance be aware of what's going on know

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that it will pass and be with yourself and again I for me I find whether that's just sitting in stillness,

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maybe it's journaling, going for a walk, and just being in nature and just being mindful of every step,

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not necessarily listening to music, just being.

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Those are two things

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that have really helped me in terms of kind of dealing with some of that energy and that dysregulation.

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But what it really comes down to is coming back to stillness, inner stillness, awareness.

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because in awareness, you create more space to experience that,

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those thoughts, those emotions, whatever it is that you don't want to be experiencing, and then you can relax in awareness,

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and that non -resistance, letting go, allowing it to be, is what calms the mind.

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Lao Tzu had a really good quote or kind of metaphor for this,

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and he said muddy water clears when you when it's still

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so basically when there's water that's super muddy you can't make that water clear by trying to

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trying to make it clear with your hand

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or with some something else you just have to let it sit

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when it's still the dust and the dirt it just settles back down to the bottom and it's clear again.

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The same is true with our mind.

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When you allow yourself to be still, everything settles and you come back into balance within yourself.

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Again, it's not easy necessarily and you have to go directly into the thing that you are resisting,

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which is the emotions, the thoughts, whatever it is.

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But think of that as the path.

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You have to go through that.

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I've realized this maybe your experience is different you have to go through

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that in order to get to the other side otherwise what

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happens is we start distracting ourselves we start engaging in behaviors

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that might be more destructive than anything to avoid experiencing

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that these things and like I said it can just cut create more problems for yourself in your life whatever that is.

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So seeing this as the discomfort is actually the path.

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The obstacle is the way.

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Moving into the discomfort of the mind, of yourself, in stillness, in awareness,

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in non -resistance, is what is needed.

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And knowing that, again, this too shall pass.

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It's not going to last forever.

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Everything comes and goes in the mind in life awareness is the unchanging thing

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so if you can return to that you can return to peace within yourself Like I said, it's a practice.

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It's not necessarily easy, especially at the beginning.

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But the more you practice it, the more you are going to be like Hermione in that plant where she just relaxes and falls straight through.

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And if you haven't watched Harry Potter, I'd recommend it.

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So I hope this video helps.

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Again, this is a strategy that's really helped me in my life.

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And I hope it helps you too.

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So see you in the next video.

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181 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Quiet Your Mind”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: awareness, stillness, resisting. This video has 191 sentences and 2309 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:32. The speaker talks at a steady 149 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 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
stillness noun	/ˈstɪlnəs/	The quality or state of being still.
resist verb	/ɹɪˈzɪst/	To attempt to counter the actions or effects of.
broaden verb	[ˈbɹɔː.dn̩]	To make broad or broader.
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.
equation noun	/ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/	The act or process of equating two or more things, or the state of those things being equal (that is, identical).
dilute verb	/daɪˈljuːt/	To make thinner by adding solvent to a solution, especially by adding water.
obstacle noun	/ˈɑbstəkəl/	Something that impedes, stands in the way of, or holds up progress, either physically or figuratively
spotlight noun	/ˈspɒtˌlaɪt/	A bright, directional light or lamp, especially one used to illuminate the focus or center of attention on a stage.
concentrate verb	/ˈkɑn.sən.tɹeɪt/	To bring to, or direct toward, a common center; to unite more closely; to gather into one body, mass, or force.
anxious adjective	/ˈæŋkʃəs/	Nervous and worried.
potter noun	/ˈpɑtɚ/	One who makes pots and other ceramic wares.
dysregulate verb		To cause a dysfunctional level of an activity or chemical in an organism by disrupting normal function of a regulatory mechanism.
meddle verb	/ˈmɛd.əl/	To interfere in or with; to concern oneself with unduly.
overwhelm verb	/ˌoʊ.vɚˈwɛlm/	To engulf, surge over and submerge.
squirm verb	/skwɝm/	To twist one's body with snakelike motions.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
calm down verb	To become less excited, intense, or angry.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
stress out verb	To become stressed.
come down to verb	To reach by moving down or reducing.
turn up verb	To show up; to appear suddenly or unexpectedly.
fall through verb	To be unsuccessful, come to nothing; to be cancelled; not to proceed.
put off verb	To postpone, especially through procrastination.
take up verb	To pick up.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

You're trying to get rid of the equation altogether.
That's what we focus on.
What happens if you turn on the lights as a whole?
It essentially comes down to, can you sit with yourself in stillness?
It's how much do I want to create more suffering for myself?

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 60 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: strengthen /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, equation /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/, shine /ʃaɪn/, spaciousness /ˈspeɪ.ʃəs.nəs/
Long words — get the stress right: dissatisfy /dɪsˈsætɪsfaɪ/, procrastinate /pɹoʊˈkɹæs.tə.neɪt/, analogy /əˈnæləd͡ʒi/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/

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 stillness, resist, broaden.

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 Quiet Your Mind (Without Trying) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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