352 The Colors of Mindfulness Through the Eyes of the Spiral; Natasha Todorovic-Cowan

Natasha Todorovic-Cowen is the CEO of National Values Centre Consulting and is the owner of the brand, Viral Dynamics. Natasha is all about helping people and businesses change. She has helped corporations with dysfunctional teams and incongruent leadership move to new levels of success. Natasha has personally endured massive levels of change in her life. She lived in three countries before the age of seven and then later, in adulthood, experienced two acquisitions and an industry that disappeared overnight. She has delivered over 100 SPIRAL DYNAMICS® Programs in 14 countries and continues to help teams learn how to meet their organizational goals. She holds an MBA degree and has worked extensively in the field of neural-linguistic programming.

Contact Info

• Company: Spiral Dynamics
• Website: SpiralDynamics.org

Most Influential Person

• Chris Cowan (my husband)

Effect on Emotions

• Mindfulness has affected my emotions by allowing me to notice the initial sparking emotion.
• Far too many of us are feeling feelings about feelings, and that's a form of affect phobia. By noticing the messages in that initial spark, we get to understand our reactions and what we need to know quickly, rather than letting things spiral out of control.

Thoughts on Breathing

• So we were talking about the PTSD, and one of the things I did when I was having a reaction was a long four count in, a four-count hold, a four-count exhale, and a four-count hold. And I did that until I could be present in the room again.

Suggested Resources

• Book: N/A
• App: Unyte

Bullying Story

• Actually, my husband and I were subject to over a decade of bullying and it was rough.
• It was very tough because some of the stuff that we did with spiral dynamics was very confronting to a certain group of folks. Sometimes we'd be in our classes delivering the spiral dynamics content and we'd have some of those people in our classes. I had PTSD for a number of years and this situation would get so bad it would trigger the entire PTSD.
• Now, if you've got a room with 30 people, you can't go freak out. So what I did was, I internally noticed the reaction, noticed the panic, and noticed the fear. I noticed it come up inside me and acknowledged what that was and asked myself, 'Okay. Is this person asking you that question because they're trying to get you? Or is it because there's a sincere desire underneath there to learn something or to explore something?'
• Once I was able to be mindful of their intentions, where they were coming from, and the origins of what it was that they were trying to explore, I was able to let that emotion or that reaction simmer down some, and then become fully present for them. Sometimes I had to ask them a couple of questions just to get myself grounded in their world, their experience, and their reality to be fully present for them. But that was one of the ways that I dealt with that.

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