Dylan Moscovitch - Olympic Pairs Figure Skater

This is episode 222 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast, where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport, and life. And now, your host, executive coach, and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast.

I feel so fortunate today to be here with Dylan Moskovich. And you may have heard of Dylan Moskovich, his name may sound familiar because he is an Olympic pairs figure skater and is a silver medalist from the Sochi Olympics back in 2014. You have an extensive background in national level figure skating and you've been through some pretty solid experiences in your personal life as well. So welcome, Dylan, and tell us a little more about you and your. Your background.

Thanks, Kari. Really happy to be here. Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, I mean, I skated my entire life. I grew up in Toronto, born and raised to my dad's from Montreal. My mom is from South Africa. And I ended up skating for the first time at 13 months old by chance because my dad took my mom on an outdoor rink and they weren't allowed to bring me on the ice unless I had skates on. So they rented the little bob skates and I just started walking and they put me down and I started walking around the ice and always begged to skate after. So after a couple years of outdoor rinks and me crying because I was cold and crying because I want to go back on the ice, someone there told my mom about a community center near my house and we went. I skated on a public session and a coach came up to my mom and asked if she could give me a lesson, and that was that. And that's how I started skating.

That's amazing because, I mean, I've been around high performance sport for a really long time and typically there's some sort of familiarity or background with the parents in order to get the kid into the sport on whatever level. But it sounds like your dad and your mom didn't have a lot of skating background. They just were recreationally enjoying themselves. Is that right?

Yeah. My dad grew up playing hockey, and I think he probably when I was young, was hoping to be a hockey player, a tennis player. He didn't really know much about figure skating, and I guess neither did my mom. She got to know it being in Canada and fell in love with it. So it kind of, yeah, I kind of chose it. And all my. I'm the oldest of four. All three younger siblings followed suit. I mean, we all were in multiple sports, multiple musical instruments. Like we were a very busy family, but figure skating was the most common thread in our lives, at least for the early years.

This is very fascinating because I think most of the listeners understand the kind of commitment it takes to really get to the national level, let alone an Olympic level. However, most of the people that we interview or that I know have a memory of starting their sport. You started your sport so young, you don't even really remember the first time getting out there. And it's just been a part of you from ever since you can remember.

Yeah, I don't have memories pre skating.

Wow. That's amazing. This, I think, will become a pertinent point when we take a look at the end of that era for you because it's so much a part of who you are, your nervous system, your way of thinking, your identity, all of the things that come with something that someone learns from such an early, early stage.

Absolutely. It's. Yeah, you can't. You can't. One can't spend their entire life dedicated to something like this with. With so much passion and ambition and. And not be completely immersed and have it interwoven with so many aspects of. Of their being, you know. So it has been a very interesting journey post retirement to really understand to what degree skating was, you know, part of the fabric of my life and the way I perceived myself.

I think that's. I think that's such an important point because it's truly a fabric of your life. And I think that unlike someone who may have lived somewhere their whole life and then move. You make the point that it was part of your. It was. It was something you're passionate about, something that you were intentional about. And that's a big difference than just something that's been in your life for a really long time. It's part of who you are. So before we go into that part of your life story, can you bring us into this really cool thing that I think most people are in awe of, and that is what it took or leading into that. That gold medal in Sochi.

Well, I have to reiterate. It was a silver. I can't quite take credit. That's okay.

I'll tell you why that comes out of my mouth so easily. Because I worked with the women's national hockey team for that Olympics. So I've said many times, and they.

Usually win every Olympics, so I. I totally understand.

Well, well, they get a silver or they get a gold. But that one, because it's usa, Canada.

Right?

That one, they want a gold. So gold medal and Sochi Olympics, in my language has been said so many times that. That. That came automatically, but we'll totally. We'll just give it that moment. It wasn't a gold. It was a silver. It's all good.

It's. It's a chunk of metal on a ribbon. And, you know, funny story that I was at that game with the women's hockey team, and it was one of my favorite moments of the entire Olympics. It was so memorable.

Unbelievable game. So if anyone wants to look back at those videos, because they exist online, it was a fantastic game.

Yeah, you can probably see me going nuts in the stands with the rest of the Canadian team.

And that's the cool thing about the Olympics, is the athletes love to support the other athletes. It's such an incredible vibe in that I haven't been able to experience it, but I have lots and lots of athletes that I've worked with or interviewed, and they love that part of it. Was that just magical for you as well?

Yeah, yeah. My event was done day five of the game, so I was really fortunate in that I got to take in so much of what was going on with different sports and the different houses and, you know, just really soaking up the Olympic atmosphere because it's electric. The energy is just electric.

What. What a gift. And I say that because in the last. When was it? In what year are we in the 2021 Summer Olympics, because they were delayed by 2020. In that Olympics, I had some athletes that I'd worked with, and they were attending that Olympics competing, and it wasn't the same experience. And it was because as soon as they competed, they had to be separated from who they had been either quarantined with or their bubble and then separated and then flown out so that other groups of coaches and athletes could be flown in. And it was just a real isolated, a much different experience than what we just described from 2014. So I think it's something that we can, as humans, look back on and appreciate just what was accessible to us at that time versus what things have been like since 2020.

Absolutely. And I think what makes the Olympic Games so special is that part of the experience. I mean, you know, to. To tie back into your question, what it was like for me leading into the Olympics. Yeah, I decided I wanted to win the Olympics when I was 5, and I went when I was 29. So if you can imagine, 24 years, one single focus and one identity and one reason for being. You know, when I look back on it, everything in my life revolved around this one thing. And in a lot of ways, people in my life, my family, they got sucked, sucked into that too. You know, and it's this, it's this force, this massive phenomenon of trying to accomplish the seemingly impossible in a lot of ways. And I really dedicated myself to my training. I pushed myself really hard, sometimes too hard. I sometimes would burn the candle at both ends too. I would sometimes not recover and rest enough. But I really, really pushed myself and trained very hard and kind of knew that I had the advantage of showing up to my first Olympics at 29, with a lot of experience. I'd been national champion, I'd been to the world Championships multiple times. I had had international success. So I, I went in knowing how I wanted to feel. And so I prepared myself so well so that I could get there and let go. And I saw a lot of other athletes really stressing and I was fortunate enough to be able to, to really enjoy my games. I had right through the competition a really enjoyable experience. I mean, I did have some, some challenges. I had an infection in both of my feet between the baby toe and the next toe. Athlete's foot turned into an abscess and it was like I couldn't put my feet in my skates. It was just too painful. So I was getting freezing injections into my feet every day. And then the freezing would wear off and the injection site would be bruised. And at the games you walk a lot. So yeah, I mean I was, I was dead set on competing. I told the doctor, cut off my toes if you need to. Like looking back on that, I'm like, what, what are you saying? What do you like for two? Two? Yeah, you know, three minutes and five minutes of your life. Come on. But at that point in my life that was, you know, that was my M.O. and my partner Kirsten, she had, you know, there's one practice we had to miss because she had a flare up with her ribs or something, I can't remember. I think her back was flaring up. You know, these are the kind of things that you encounter when you've been pushing your body to be at the best shape of your life for this one moment to hopefully step out on the ice and be the best you can ever be in that moment. So hope it takes us your best.

Hope that your best of everything you've been able to accumulate and develop and every fine tuning moment can actually beat that best, can actually beat whoever else has performed or developed their best. But before, sorry, I want to just jump back to something that you said, you said you knew how you wanted to feel going into that Olympics. And a lot of your experience helped you decide that. How was it that you wanted to feel going into the Olympics? What did you decide? What was the feeling you wanted to have going into that?

Confident. I wanted to feel that I was so ready that I could be free. You know, there's the. There's a physical side of being ready which really allows that freedom. I think every skater, when they start their free, their long program, the free program, every single one knows this is gonna suck. No matter how trained you are, there's gonna be moments where you're just so tired. It's like a four and a half minute sprint with the smile on your face, you know, like you're. Your heart rate can get up into the 1 90s and it is just. We can't show that fatigue. Right. So you just kind of, yeah, you kind of just accept that there's going to be a level of pain no matter how ready you are. But that familiarity of that pain and being able to withstand it with grace, with ease, without panic, enables a skater to be able to perform freely, to be able to be with the music, to be able to be not focusing on whether or not they will do the element, but to be focusing on the fine tunement of the execution. And just like one or two key points, just enough where you know you're going to do it. It's like, okay, is my toe pointed that I hold my landing position? Like all these figure skating things, you know, that show a higher level of execution, show a more detailed, a more detailed approach to the homework, you know, so that refinement is what separates skaters. And so for me, I wanted to show up knowing that I was so ready that I could be focused on those things. And then also for me, the biggest component for me of being an athlete was the mental. Was the mental side of things. I really, really loved and was fascinated by the psychology of being an athlete. I did kung fu for many years and worked with a neurologist doing biofeedback for many years. And so for me, the mental game was kind of where I thrived. And I really took it upon myself to work to make sure that my mental game was really strong as well, so I could go in there and withstand the energy and the excitement of the Olympics. And knowing that I'm an excitable person, knowing that I have the tools to ground myself and be able to focus and enjoy, not just feel like I need to hold everything off so I can go and skate.

That's such a powerful point, I think, because I'm going to guess sometimes I make assumptions because I've been in the world of high performance sports so long. But I would guess that most people know and accept that sports psychology is a major part of the preparation and, and the final product. However you give it such an importance for your experience. How much to give people who aren't necessarily in high level sport or figure skating per se, because every sport is so different. How much time. Would you be allowing for mental preparation or the psychology side of things?

Well, I'll give a little context on how important it is for figure skating in my opinion. You know, when you're going in to do a jump, you're, you're moving fast, you're balancing mostly on one foot on a little blade right on ice, which is slippery. And depending on who skated before you, there can be holes in the ice. So there are all these things that can happen that are happening and then at the same time there it's like, it's like hitting a golf ball but out of a moving car kind of. Because if you add the speed component. So if your focus goes like you're set up to jump or you're. I'm set up to throw my partner. If I jump the gun just a little bit, if I just get a little bit anxious, the whole thing's gone. And potentially there go the Olympic dreams, you know, just like that done. So you can do all the preparation in the world and that can still happen. But having an intimate relationship with what the mind, what your own mind does in its own unique way under pressure, under stress, and being able to be comfortable within that discomfort now enables the presence to be able to apply tools to recenter, to refocus if something does go off a little bit. Being able to hit that reset button right away because we're also being judged on performance, we can't show any disappointment, right? So for me, I mean I had, I had a regular practice of meditation, visualization, different, different forms of it. For me it's a, it's a, it's a mindset, it's a way of life. You know, how you do anything is how you do everything. If you're a strong minded athlete off the field of play in the way you live your life and the way you handle life, you're getting reps, you're practicing that super highway of responding to life.

When did that start for you in, in the mental prep, the psychology side of things? Did you have A mental coach. When you were young, did you do. They. Did the national program provide a sports psych for you? How did that.

How did it.

Do you have a key recollection of this is part of my training now, or was it always there from such a young age that you don't really remember that coming in?

I remember there being little seminars or little brushes with it when I was young. When I was 19, in my teens, I had a little bit of a focus problem. I wanted it too bad, I tried too hard and. And I would do what's called in skating a pop where you go into jump and then you bail out in the air and just open up. It's like a parachute. You bail on the rotation. And so my dad found a kung fu teacher by the name of Glenn Doyle, who was Elvis Stoiko's sifu, his kung fu teacher. I started working with Glenn and that changed my career, changed my life. Glenn was a huge, huge contributor in me finding more confidence. I mean, you know, this will tie into other things we talk about, I'm sure. But I was bullied growing up and as a male figure skater, I had some self worth and confidence things around that. And I think I was carrying some of that. I was still trying to prove myself all the time. So I was trying too hard. I had to try too hard. Kind of tick at times. Kung fu helped me find more confidence, more groundedness within my body, more safety within my body. And then the sharpening of my mind in that presence, that warrior mindset of like a calm lake, but underneath there's. There's energy just ready to explode. That really started things for me and I became so enthralled with the whole, the whole experience of kung fu and the mental. And I don't think I understood at the time, but the spiritual side of it too, feeling connected to something powerful. And then, you know, I. I realized its power and I can just continued working within the mental focus side of things, seeing how much it brought me as an athlete and, and seeing, okay, this is something that's not just like I'm there, it's a continual. I want to keep learning from many different people. Martial arts always stayed a part of that. But I worked in biofeedback with computers and sensors on my brain and my body and just really saw my mind, my brain as like going to the gym. How do I want this muscle to behave? What kind of patterns do I want to be the default and, and work on that, you know, as regularly as possible.

It's amazing because it sounds like it unlocked your ability to pull together the mental, physical and spiritual ability that's always there. However, most of us just don't ever get the opportunity or know that there is an opportunity to tap into so much more available to us.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm so grateful for the life I lived as an athlete because it brought me the opportunity to get so deeply intimate with what I'm capable of doing. When fear comes up, when doubt comes up, when resistance presents itself, to say, stop, this is uncomfortable. You know, I'm very comfortable in that place because I spent a lifetime learning how much more I have. And what's been really interesting is post athletic career is seeing the shadow side of that life and seeing, you know, what was the cost, how much of myself did I bury to stay? And sometimes a toxic positivity, you know, where, where was I starting to lose some of myself in this like locked on mindset of when it all costs. And, and where did, where did that like push, kind of remove myself from the spiritual side from this, the self preservation, the awareness of, of what my inner being was asking for, you know, because the, the goal started to become bigger than my own self worth. It was my self worth and I identified the result of it as whether I was worthy or not as a person.

It sounds like you already have given a pretty profound example of that. When you were clear that you would have the doctor cut your toes off in order to complete the goal. There wasn't a question there. It's like, yeah, if you need to do this, you do it. And hopefully there's a physician there who will question your mindset in the moment and not proceed.

Yes, I would imagine, I would imagine almost all would not proceed.

Yeah, you'd hope for, even for their.

Own self preservation, for their own career, you know, like, oh, I don't think that, I don't think that's regulation to just go and cut people's toes off.

Cut the toes off or not?

Yes, yes, let's roll a dice. But you know, it's interesting because I remember reading an article about this journalist had interviewed athletes and said, if it was guaranteed that you would win a gold medal at the Olympics but you would die a year later, would you still do it? And more than 50% said yes.

That doesn't surprise me for how many Olympians?

Yeah, and I have a lot of, I have a lot of deep feelings about that. I have a lot of deep feelings about that. I feel, I feel like the glorification of, of glory, the glorification of glory is. Is intoxicating, I think. Not to trash sport, but to be frank, the industry of sport thrives on. Thrives on the inflated hopes and dreams of this. Arriving at this, you know, this promised land if you get there, and that your life will just be perfect. And that illusion isn't overtly sold by everybody. But the packaging around sport only shows the glory for the most part. And I think the fact that. That many souls would trade life for a result that is based on rules that someone else set. Like, you know, really, if you're. If you're to get philosophical about sport, the best doesn't. Maybe. Maybe in like a timed event, but, like the best at something can't really exist because there are so many factors that we all have to agree to just push aside, you know, so it's wonderful what it brings, but also to be willing to give up your life for a medal, you know, and it's kind of. It's given me some deep reflection as to what, like, why, like, what happened. That something inside of me felt like my life wasn't worth more than just that metal.

Yeah, it. It's interesting that. And this is one of the reasons this podcast that we started it. It's interesting that that that's the side that the fans or most people see is the glorification side. And. And then the other side. There is no other side because no one sees it. It's not in the media, the. The individuals. If there's athletes who have gone to the other side of that medal or of the end of their career, you're usually not talking about it. And. And then the sport bodies themselves at the national level, especially in Canada. It's not like there's a safety net or a pathway or a next step for procedure that people are naturally siphoned into once they've been put out to pasture, if you will, or cut or, you know, because it can be.

Or injured.

Or injured. Yeah. There can be pretty abrupt endings to that pathway of glory and it turns into the, you know, the spiral of the death of the career.

So the death of the identity.

Yes, yes. So take us to you. I don't know. The circumstances around the silver medal. Was it all you'd hoped for? Because it wasn't the gold, but it was a. An Olympic medal. So what was that like? And then lead us forward from there.

Yeah, the Olympic.

I mean, let's talk about the glory for just one second.

Glory. All right. It'll be glorious. It was glorious. It was amazing. It was amazing. It was absolutely incredible. I was part of the first ever team figure skating event. So for once we got to compete as a country. I was competing alongside my best friend and arch rival, Eric Radford. We were always neck and neck, so we got to stand on the podium together. And I got to have that experience of standing in the Olympic plaza, getting a medal with the Olympic, you know, cauldron in the background, my parents there. It was like a childhood dream come true. It was unbelievable. I had to compete in the pair event two days later. So I had to kind of monitor my level of excitement. And that event was great. We came fifth. We skated two very strong programs. And in figure skating, you have to. You have to stay connected to your own performance as the main metric because there's just, there's so many factors when it's judged by people, you know, and figure skating is notorious for its political side and, and that still does exist. But I, I don't feel like looking at the Olympics. I don't feel like I was really robbed. I feel like we went out there, we did a really good job. It was a very strong field and I'm very happy with that. Moving forward from there. My career took a big change. My partner ended things kind of out of nowhere. And.

Now if your partner hadn't ended things, did you know right away you would have gone for 2018?

Yeah, that was, that was kind of what the understanding was. And so my experience of it was that it kind of felt like out of nowhere. And I was with those coaches for 13 years. And yeah, everything just kind of changed. And I think people expected me to retire. I was turning 30 that year and I wasn't done. So I got a new partner. Yeah. Who moved from Russia and we skated together for four years, working on our immigration status to go to the Olympics. We were doing well internationally and nationally. And going into the 2017, 2018 season, we were, we were. We had placed the highest at worlds for Canada. We were sixth in and had helped to earn three spots for the games. And the season started off a bit slow for us, but that wasn't abnormal. And so we were going into nationals. Four teams vying for three spots, like four really strong teams vying for three spots. And we were looking like a team to go. The Canadian immigration minister signed my partner's documents himself so we would have that opportunity. And then three weeks before Nationals, a 200 pound mirror fell on my face as I was lying in a Pilates studio and knocked me unconscious and cut my hand open. Cracked a bone in my hand and my face was all cut up. And yeah, I, I was pretty shaken up. I was pretty scared, you know, knowing what was coming. And I, I tried to go to nationals on three days training and still with concussion symptoms, and we came forth and missed the Olympic team by a spot. That was essentially the end of my career. So I have experienced the complete duality of the Olympics. I went, I had the glory and I was that athlete that missed it by a spot and stayed home and watched my friends, you know, so I felt the spectrum, so to speak.

And what happened then? I mean, were you, did you know that you were immediately devastated, perhaps depressed, or did you kind of, were you in denial? What happened for you?

Yeah, I mean, I have learned more recently in my life how to grieve. And I've done a lot of grieving from things that I didn't grieve. That was such a powerful experience that I, I just had to grieve at least a bit. But I don't think I really gave myself the full permission, space and time to, to really feel it all. I tried to, you know, watch the Olympics and watch my friends because that was the strong and honorable thing to do. And after that we had another competition. We got offered to go to four continents and I said, you know, I'm going to go, I'm going to redeem myself. And it was a disaster. I was in such a dark place. We skated horribly and. And then I decided to not go to worlds and just call it. And that was it. So after that I. Sorry, go ahead.

Do you think that decision to go and compete right after, do you think that that was just a knee jerk reaction? Or do you think if you had, what did you need at the time in order to have maybe a better decision for yourself? Or do you think that that decision would have happened one way or another?

Yeah, I mean, it was only like a week and a half in between the two events, so I didn't really have the time and I didn't want to end my career in that way. I ended up ending it in an even worse way. But, you know, it. The way I look back on it now is that life was trying to help me move away from figure skating because I was so attached to it.

And between the 200 pound mirror, between the.

Yeah, I mean, the metaphors, you know, like a 200 pound mirror landed on my face and there were shards of glass lying all over my neck and body. Somehow I didn't die. But the fact that you Know, life decided to drop a reflection on my face. How many messages was I not receiving before that? How, how, how much was I, you know, turning a blind eye to? And then at the hospital, they had to cut my Olympic ring off my finger. And there's another, you know, incredibly powerful metaphor of like, this is not going to happen and this is not your path anymore. And I didn't understand that at the.

Time, but I saw your Instagram post of that photo and you know, you can't help but. There's part of the voyeurism that occurs when we all see what's going on so personally in someone's life, in their life or others lives. And at the same time the symbolism is so powerful and yet at the time it doesn't mean you can see it. That's true. I think for all of us that there are things right in front of our faces, whether they're injuries, burnout, just obvious stopping or blocks in our way that are slowing us down just to try and perhaps tell us something. And we can't see them because we're so caught up in. And it doesn't have to be an Olympia, it can be any of us caught up in the achieving of the next thing or the worth tied to that particular achievement. Doesn't matter whether it's business, whether it is personal life, whether it is sport. It seems that we as achievers have that element of I don't want to see what I don't want to see and I'm just going to put the blinders on and stay focused and keep going. I found it really, because in those photos that you shared, and by all means, everybody go see that Instagram post in those photos, it's like, okay, this is what happened. And matter of fact, but then at the same time, there's this profound message that you can see clearly now. At the time, it wasn't so clear at the time.

Yeah. And you know, I would, I would almost argue that it's not that we can't see, it's that we won't. And you know, looking back, it's like I always knew all these things, all the things I'm learning now. It's like there was something deep inside of me, very muffled, because I had developed a very powerful ability to compartmentalize, like many athletes do. And I was very good at it. I could put away whatever I needed to put away. And I did. I silenced, I silenced myself to the point that the wisdom residing within me was overridden by my mind. My ego's need to get to. To achieve, to accomplish. And it was like I threw the GPS out the window and just floored the Ferrari. You know, it's like, I don't care what direction I'm going, I'm going as fast as I can. And looking back, it just. I felt so much sadness for myself to think about the kind of state I was in, the desperation, you know, the pain that was propelling me, because had I been propelled by more of a state of love, I think I would have more acceptance and more willingness to see the whole picture and move with it, you know, to flow with it, to see that, like, yes, sometimes you need to take a couple steps back or to the right or to the left to see, oh, actually there's a path up that mountain, up along the side that I didn't see because I was being so stubborn, trying to climb up this icy straight pitch, sliding back down over and over and over again, you know?

Absolutely. And. And don't you also, looking back at that suffering human, don't you just want to give him a hug?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like this. This inner child, this. This young, sensitive boy, and I've done a lot of work on this as young, sensitive boy, got caged after some very difficult moments in my life of being made to feel small. And I never wanted to feel small again. So I built armor. I built armor internally. I built my body to be strong and. And I always had to go into competitions feeling like I was one of the strongest guys there, and that. That frame was protecting me from the feeling of unsafety and the. The weight of comparison in my life. You know, it was like, at least I have this. To hold this weight, to hold this structure together.

Yeah, I can personally relate to that. Being a small human and small female in a very large dominant male, dominant field. And the feeling of being physically strong is that helpful supporter of the confidence that you're trying to build from an outside perspective instead of building it from the worth. And inside perspective is you. You have a skill. And I. I can't help but notice that when athletes like yourself, humans like yourself, athlete or not, have such incredible skills of building armor, of compartmentalizing, then what I. What I tend to see in myself and others is that that same skill gets utilized sometimes, whether we intend for it to be utilized or not. Do you think there's anything that you're compartmentalizing now in your life, despite the amount of healing and work you've done?

I mean, I think. I think the path of healing and self discovery is endless and ongoing. So to say no, I think would be an obvious indication that I have a lot more work to do. But, you know, of course, of course there is, there's, you know, familial relations within the family dynamic and seeing where some of beliefs or behaviors come from and, and seeing little aspects of where I shrink myself in certain situations or where I react instead of respond in certain situations. And, and don't, you know, I don't address something from my higher self and allow myself maybe to slip back in to an old way. And then if I'm in a moment of weakness, I don't sit with that. I want to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. But I would say through the work I've done, those moments are becoming far less intense and far less frequent. And my willingness to, my curiosity to what it is that's propelling me and where, where that next expansion lies, I see it as a thread, you know, and that's what excites me is like this, this sucks to look at, but it's being shown because it wants to be shown, because it's like an offering as fuel for transformation. So I try. I tried. Now, this is an interesting segue from where you talked about those, those skills of armor, that strength. I'm learning to repurpose that tool. Instead of it being like a hammer and smashing things in front of me, I'm using that strength. I'm trying to use that strength to hold myself so I feel strong enough and safe enough to stay open as opposed to staying closed so that I can withstand life from this open, raw, real, vulnerable, truthful place and allow myself to be seen in the most difficult times where I want to close. And I think that's where that, that creativity of like, oh, I have this tool. How else can this tool be used? Like, where can I tap into this lifetime of wealth of experience of, you know, pushing myself, being resilient, beating the odds, learning what I'm capable of and believing in myself. How can I use that now on my journey inward? And I think that's where being an athlete can be really, really useful. But I think that everyone possesses that. They just, everyone has an inner Olympian, you know, and it's just, it's just learning that it's there, learning to trust that it's there and, and, and being brave enough to let it come out.

Using the strength, using the courage to take the armor off and be vulnerable and, and allow whatever is, whatever the painful, negative emotion or scary space, allow it to be there and just be with it.

It's a teacher, it's there to teach. Right. It's there to help us, I believe. You know, it's like a, it's a gift. It's a gift of showing us. It's like getting, having a coach giving you feedback. You know, if you can't see, if I can't see that I'm dropping my right side on the takeoff of a triple salchow, for instance, I have a coach to tell me and sometimes it's frustrating to hear it, but otherwise I'm just going to keep falling down.

And to your point, that's one of the most beautiful things about coaching that people may be a little afraid of or uncertain of or unfamiliar with. And it's that we are our own least objective observers of ourselves. We are not objective observers of ourselves. And yet when we have a coach with our brain or our body or any part of our lives, they can be an objective observer going, hey, this is what I'm seeing and you're not seeing it. That just brings me to what you've been exploring, exploring in your life. Now that it sounds like has really, really served you in your, your healing, in your process, in your journey of your life from the glory days of Olympic sport and just being in, in the space of life coaching or you, you do a lot of work at reunion retreats, union retreats in Costa Rica and the, the work that you do with plant based medicines like psilocybin as well. So there's so much interesting information, research, experience that people have been playing and toying with for their own journeys of healing. And I'm curious to know what's that been like for you because now you are in a position where you help, you mentor people, you coach people, you help heal people in the environment that you're in, you are able to utilize plant based medicine like psilocybin. What's, what's that all opened up for you?

Yeah, It's a big 180. It's a big 180. And it's taken me a while to get here. I would say first off, what, what really I had to go into my, my dark night of the soul. You know, I, I had a lot of pain that I needed to go through and I'm so grateful I did. But it, it's been a journey and through, through meditation, through Buddhism, through yoga, through all these different philosophical spiritual paths, I started to uncover tools and awarenesses of how to perceive reality. And through that I was able to start looking at myself more truthfully. But that only came hand in hand with my ability to love myself more unconditionally. And what has really helped me with, with, you know, working with psilocybin and, and other, and other plant medicines like San Pedro huachuma or peyote, but more, more intimately with ayahuasca, which is a plant brew from the Amazon. And we at the retreat center, we work with that plant as well, where we bring in indigenous wisdom keepers from various lineages in the Amazon region. We're tapping into an ancient, ancient technology of healing. You know, these, these people have such a deep and historic relationship with healing, with nature. And what these plants and the fungi do is they help us to see. And sometimes that can be uncomfortable. But our, our self preservation wants us to avoid pain. So the mind, the ego, we try and turn away to, to protect us because you know, when we have trauma or we have very difficult things happen to us, we have this incredible ability to keep going. And we build this little root around the roadblock and that little route soon becomes a highway. And that roadblock gets like, kind of covered in dust, but it's still creating, it's still creating some sort of pollution, you know, and it's still affecting the root of the way we perceive reality, the way we perceive life and ourselves. And what these plants do, I found through my experience is they help us return to truth, they help us return to wholeness, remember our nature, which is deeply interwoven with nature itself and help us to, to see the beauty of, of life and that everything is showing us and teaching us. Like learning to become a student, a beginner's mind. As one of the, one of the, one of the people I work with, he likes to use the phrase beginner's mind in looking at the way a tree adapts to its environment, looking at the way an insect adapts to its environment, the way it beautifully accepts challenge, builds a way through it. You know, learning from psilocybin, like if people haven't watched it, watch Fantastic Fungi. It's an incredible documentary learning from a being. Like the fungus, which is the ultimate alchemizer on the planet. There are fungi, there are fungi that can eat rocks, that can eat plastic, that eat oil spills. This is it. This is a being that can turn almost anything into food. It is the most resilient thing on the planet. It, it has a decentralized intelligence system. It's sends information, it works together, adapts with its environments and it's anti fragile. So not only are we in, you know, ingesting a psychedelic substance that helps us to change our state so that we can, you know, see things and receive messages from our subconscious and see parts of us that we have trouble getting to, to our, our normal conscious state. We're also communing with the spirit of another being that has this way of surviving on the planet, you know, and so even metaphorically, the psychology of going into a ceremony to surrender to something like that, to learn from a non human teacher and, and open oneself up to, to. Maybe I don't have all the pieces of information. Maybe there's more. Maybe it's more woo woo than I think it is that I, that is good for me. Or maybe I'm completely in. That's not the point. To me it's like it's, it's an experiment of surrender. It's an experiment of curiosity. It's an experiment of how, how dedicated and devoted one can be to their own healing, to their own growth, to their own getting to know oneself on a deeper level. Not this idea of who we think we are because we present that to the world, but like who are we? You know, before the world told us who to be. And I found that all of these different methodologies, coaching, mentoring, we're all, you know, as Ram Dass says, we're all just walking each other home, which I feel is so beautiful. And I've experienced through the retreat, both as a participant and as a facilitator, you know, sitting in sharing circles that we heal as a community. And it is so powerful to be seen to be able to be held to a point where we can be so vulnerable that we can share the things that are so scary to say and be received and not judged and respected. It's like carrying a backpack of bowling balls and just taking it off. Oh my gosh, I feel so free, you know, and so to be able to provide that space for people to heal themselves is just, is so beautiful and so rewarding. And I feel a lot of my skating life starting to help me in this world and in understanding that when people are facing their fear, when they're coming up against their resistance and they want to turn away. I've spent my entire life learning how to not. Yeah. So I can help. I can help people understand how to find that strength within them to keep going.

Yeah. For anyone who's apprehensive about trying something like a plant based medicine, they never have before, there's old ideas around it that they've learned along the way and there's some apprehension. What would you say to them in, in your experience?

Yeah, I mean it's not for everyone and I don't think people should be forced into doing it by any means. I would say unhook from all the ideas that have been planted in your mind about what it is, good and bad. You know, people get excited and they share their experience, their visions or this and they're that and people come in with expectations and there's all these things. Yeah. Developing a relationship with this experience is personal. And the medicine, the plant medicine speaks through each person differently. But it's not the answer it, but it is a very powerful tool in helping along the journey. Like if you were to imagine you're digging a hole with a shovel and you hit rock, this is kind of like throwing some dynamite down to blast through something that your current tool is not able to help you. And then you get the shovel and you keep digging. It's not going to fix everything, but it's going to show you what's possible and it's going to deepen your awareness of some of the things that exist within you. Both beautiful and painful.

I, I really appreciate that response. I, I personally have experienced psilocybin and I'm one who I, I don't even really drink much alcohol. I used to back year decades ago, drink a lot of alcohol or do some things here and there but to numb my pain. And you know, in these years I, I don't and I have experienced some of what plant based medicine can open us to and it's very, very powerful. I want to be really conscious of time here and really allow you to finish us off with a last perhaps message that you would impart to that version of yourself back when you were suffering or struggling. What would you say to yourself back then if. If there was something that the now version of you knows that you needed to hear that be.

There's a number of things I would say it would probably start with a big hug. You're enough. You've always been enough. And there's nothing that you need to do to prove that it's safe to look. And the truth will set you free. The truth is, is everything. Without it, we're lost. We've lost our gps, we've lost our map. And there's no one, no one's opinion that you need to. There's no one's validation that you need to earn other than your own. And when you are in alignment with your soul, with your heart, and you are listening to the wisdom that's coming from those places and having the courage to follow that wisdom. Life will open up and the right people will be there.

That is beautiful and powerful. Thank you so much, Dylan for joining us on the Empowered Team podcast. Where can, where can people find you? Where do you hang out the most? Instagram.

I try not to hang out too much on Instagram.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, I'm on Instagram. Dylan Moskovich. I have another Instagram for my, my coaching which I'm still kind of building, but it's at Underscore, Heelx, Underscore and then the reunion retreat center that I work at is in Costa Rica and we have an Instagram at Reunion Experience and The website is reunionexperience.org and it's a beautiful place. If anyone does feel, you know, interested or called, we do have discovery calls. Trained people can answer any questions. The website's very extensive and we are a not for profit. So you know, our focus is really to, to give back and to, to help various initiatives. We're not looking to line our pockets. We're just looking to be part of a good change. So yeah, definitely take a look if it interests anybody.

That is beautiful. I am so grateful to have you on and have you share so openly what your experience has been and your journey has been. So thank you so much, Dylan and we will connect with you soon.

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

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