Professional skateboarder Alex Olson has become almost as well-known for his deep commitment to wellness as anything he does on a board. But he says that transformation wasn’t seamless. “I was a very emotional skateboarder,” Olson says. “I think maybe most athletes come from a broken home or some type of trauma. The sport that you pick is your escapism.” Building the tool kit to deal with those emotions took work: yoga, meditation, breathing, a potent psychedelic derived from the venom of an actual toad.

His latest venture is a partnership with running gear company District Vision, a company that has managed a similar fusion of wellness and sports. (They sell stylish high-performance tights and the world's nicest meditation cushions.) Olson collaborated with the brand on a six-video series designed for anyone to pick up from scratch and explore breathing and meditation.

Ahead of the course’s launch, GQ caught up with Olson and District Vison co-founder Max Vallot about how athletes “experience the emotional rollercoaster in all its glory,” why “flow state” is actually just another kind of high, and the symbiosis between psychedelics and meditation.

GQ: For starters, how are we defining “athlete” here?

Alex Olson: When you say athlete, it's more of a mindset than anything. I think a musician could be an athlete. It's more of just continuing on the path of what your goal is and achieving it at any cost. It's really just knowing how to practice and continuing practicing. These little achievements and them compounding over time is an athlete's mindset. It's not being afraid of failure. Failure isn't really failure, it's just progression. It's more seen as a progress to something that you're trying to achieve.

So why is mindfulness and meditation a missing piece for athletes?

Max Vallot: When people talk about, "Yeah, surfing is my meditation. Skating or running is my meditation." That is true to a degree. Without mindfulness, though, you could have a great surf or a great run, but it's only great as long as it's going well. You're not growing from it. You're just getting high. It's a healthier form of getting high.

In that way, it's no different than having a glass of wine or many of the other things that produce interesting experiences that help you escape. Maybe going to IMAX and watching Dune, and being fully immersed in the picture. But you're not growing from that. You're just distracted. The crucial difference is awareness. It's really as simple as that. If you are aware, you can see it for what it is, and what it is is just a high. The next minute, you turn around and you'll be in a low. 

On a psychedelic journey, you'll be down in a cave of death. In a movie, you'll be disturbed by something you see. In surfing, you'll be wiped out by a wave—or not catching anything for hours. In a marathon, you'll hurt your knee and you can't run at the pace that you were planning to. So it's just the awareness of the ebbs and flows. It's the awareness of anything that arises in the present moment, and learning to see it for what it truly is: just ephemeral phenomena, empty of substance. Nothing to attach to, nothing to define your experience. That's where the freedom lies.

Olson: I was a very emotional skateboarder, where if I didn't do my trick, I'd get so frustrated and explode in frustration and anger. I think with meditation and yoga and all that stuff, it makes it easier—knowing to recognize those emotions when they come on, and having a set of tools to better combat them. When I didn't have them, when I was much younger, I was more frustrated and less patient. So I guess in the grand scheme of things, it teaches you patience. You build up an enormous amount of patience with meditation and with yoga, and sitting in a posture that's uncomfortable for long periods of time. That obviously translates into other things into the world that frustrates us, and gives us a longer fuse.

You were an emotional skateboarder. How did your relationship to your emotions change through mindfulness?

Olson: It's pretty common. I think most every skateboarder has a moment of frustration or screaming or whatever, just because it's this finite thing that you're trying to do. With mindfulness, you understand when those emotions start to arise and start presenting themselves. I wish I had those tools when I was younger, but at the same time, I wasn't mature enough to even take the time to investigate and invest in them.

Vallot: There's a famous saying in Buddhism that goes something like, "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf." It's really as simple as that. The waves will keep coming, and by being an athlete, by experiencing life in such intense form, you confront these waves so much more directly. You choose to get right into the battlefield of emotions. That's what makes athletes so interesting, is that they experience the emotional rollercoaster in all its glory. That's why we keep coming back to athletes.

Olson: When Max was talking about psychedelics, something registered: Being aware of when you go into a dark place versus a lighter place on psychedelics. I think being able to have that scope and realize that you're going into that dark place, you have the tools to shift it and get out of that much quicker than just letting your thoughts take over. I think that's another huge part of mindfulness, having all those tools to really control—not control, but to better see the things arising or coming towards you and being able to step out of the way of it, or just run with it.

The idea is that there actually is no such thing as a bad trip. You could apply that to “there is no such thing as a bad wave." Or “there is no bad game or competition.” It just is. So mindfulness gives you the ability to master awareness of emotions without reacting to them. Is that right?

Max: Exactly. The half life of an emotion is what? If you actually pay attention to what's going on, it'll be a matter of minutes, if that. But without mindfulness, what the mind tends to do is get stuck in a mental loop. It's like, "I'm having a bad day. I'm in a bad mood. This is not right. This sucks. I should have trained better." Will you find your way out, or will you not?

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That's where mindfulness comes in. It's non-attachment. You feel whatever arises, you're surrendering to whatever arises. Whatever that may be, whether that's pain in your knee, headache, frustration over your coworker, a trick in skateboarding you're not getting, that is just a mental pattern. That is just a pattern of energy in the mind.

Is it right to say that without mindfulness, emotions feel like truth or reality, but with mindfulness, emotions are more of a perceived experience? Is that a distinction you can make?

Vallot: Yeah.

Olson: Yeah, I agree with that. Definitely. I just think you have more appreciation of it, you know what I mean? I didn't really care about color and then when I started shooting photos when I was younger, it made me like, "Oh my God, I appreciate colors of plants and flowers." Just having that awareness. I think that applies to this emotions with mindfulness: It's just appreciation and awareness of what's going on within the moment, and also appreciating the darker emotions and understanding them a little more clearly.

You guys have mentioned psychedelics, so how does psychedelic medicine impact your meditation practice?

Vallot: This is so important and something I'm thinking about so much. I think broadly speaking, there are different ways of using psilocybin. So the way I've done it, and the way that I suggest people truly interested in meditation do it, is start with a higher dosage, three to five grams. Blindfold yourself and work with a musician or a playlist, or a guide. If you're truly experienced at meditation, you can do it on your own. I have done it on my own. It really depends on where you're at. But at that point, it becomes like the analogy the philosopher Sam Harris uses: "If meditation is like gently setting the sails, taking psychedelics is like strapping yourself to a rocket." That really hits the nail on the head for me. It is a way of breaking through boundaries, of exploring the nature of consciousness, of experiencing the true essence of self.

Once you have done it a few times, it completely transforms your meditation practice. I used to be so critical of psychedelics, but there is so much value at kicking the doors open and showing you what's out there in this vast expanse of what we call consciousness. I just don't know if our brains—that are wired by these mental habits—can get there alone. Michael Pollan has an anecdote in his book: If you have a skiing slope and all the paths are set, one skier goes down, and the next skier goes down the same. Over time, you have very distinct patterns, traces on the mountain. Psychedelics are essentially like adding new snow to everything so that you can form new paths. What we're seeing in neuroscience is literally the brain rewiring itself. You all of a sudden have access to knowledge, to wisdom, to information that you just don't have access to in an ordinary state.

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Do you think that for people who don't feel comfortable exploring psychedelics, can you get from meditation, at a slower rate, what you can get from psychedelic medicine?

Olson: With years of practice. But I think psychedelics show you how to do it, or what to focus on after. I can speak on doing a Bufo ceremony and realizing like, "Now I know where to really focus my attention of when I do practice, or where to put my focus." [Bufo, which Mike Tyson says changed his life, comes from the Colorado River toad—its secretions contain 5-MeO-DMT, which is also found in ayahuasca.] Doing Bufo and having that out of body experience made my meditation practice 10 times stronger in terms of what mental work I got done with that ceremony. It just made my meditation practice so much stronger, and knowing where to focus and just feeling that I just got basically a support or a foundation, to now really home in on.

Are you able to verbalize what the breakthrough you got was from that ceremony?

Olson: The short of it basically, was love and compassion. Treat everything with love and compassion and things will present themselves as the right path. When you're in an uncomfortable position, just breathe and focus on your breath at any moment. It's not very visual—It's more about feeling—feeling on a cellular level. If I started to panic or try to control something, I would go more to a darker side, versus if I just let go and gave it love and compassion and just let the ride present itself, I would go to the lighter part. I think from that, coming out of that being like, "Okay, that's what I need to focus on. That's what I need to keep telling myself and try to get those emotions and hold those emotions when I meditate."

Vallot: What it does, how exactly it cuts through our conventional way of seeing the world, is that it can illuminate who we really are. I mean, we hear about this idea of “we're all one” all the time. I'm like, "Yeah, sure." But once you've taken a certain amount of mushrooms and you do approach it as a meditation, and you do look for yourself, you realize that there truly isn't anything that is separate. That thing which we think of as us is present in everyone. You can say, “well, that is accessible in meditation.” It is accessible in meditation, and meditation is the work. Meditation is the practice. Meditation is more important than psychedelics. There's no question about it.

Interview has been edited and condensed. 

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