Episode 56 – Context in Exposure Work for Resilience with Elite Performance Consultant Dan Cooper

Dan is dedicated to changing the perception of human capability. An ex SAS member with 22 years in the military (18 in special ops), he is no stranger to colossal adversity. Dan is an extreme adventurer and an academic, with a bachelor of science, dual master’s degrees and a current PhD research project on eliciting peak performance within high threat, complex environments. Dan has achieved what many would consider impossible, taking his knowledge and research and applying it personally, from ultra marathons in the desert to a 750km trek across the frozen subarctic wilderness to the Crossfit masters, where he was named Top 80 Fittest in the World.

In this episode, we discuss:

00:00 Introduction
07:32 Letting children build resilience
11:29 Safety and human connection
19:30 Embracing change
27:00 Fitting in vs belonging
30:00 Inauthenticity and burnout
33:00 Letting go of identities
39:40 The need for context
44:37 Breathwork for resilience
52:40 Breathing is building awareness
55:30 Context of exposure work
58:49 Interoception, emotions and perception
01:03:31 Predicting outcomes
01:06:00 Mechanisms of response under threat
01:11:45 Self-regulation and fear
01:14:35 Motivation vs avoidance behaviours are domain-specific
01:19:04 The cost of elite performance

You can find out more about Dan and the work he does at https://komanchi.com.au, or by visiting his social media https://instagram.com/dancooper_msc or https://instagram.com/the_resilience_lab on instagram.

You find more episodes on human performance you can visit https://performancethroughhealth.com/category/podcast/ or my instagram https://instagram.com/performancethroughhealth