Williams’ adventure takes him to alternative healing
Ricky Williams, ex-football star and now self-described teacher and healer, still takes the path less travelled.
Recently, he coached a team of Chinese university students getting ready for the first World University Championship in American Football in Sweden next month.
The 36-year-old lives like he played — always moving while always thinking of where he’ll go next.
Williams isn’t like most people. Most people like to talk about what they know. Williams wants to talk about things he doesn’t know. Every day when he wakes up, his mind is full of questions. He wants others to feel that curiosity too and to unlock the genius within.
“We lack curiosity about who we are,” the son of a minister says while sitting in the Many Mansions Spiritual Centre in Hamilton.
He follows his heart even when it takes him these “uncommon and weird places” like the study of Ayurveda, which is an Indian science of healing.
In 2012, after retiring for the second time from the NFL, he looked inside his heart and asked himself what other skills he had. The answer: He was good at talking to people and making them feel better. So he took it a step further and became student of holistic healing.
Williams was in Hamilton as the subject of a documentary on alternative healing called Out of Bounds, which is shooting in several locations around the world.
The Toronto area has always been special to him because one of his three children with wife, Kristin, was born here when he played a season with the Argonauts in 2006.
But Austin, Tex., is his home. He pays the bills by coaching at the University of Incarnate Word in San Antonio and doing work as a TV analyst at the Texas Longhorns games, where his legend grew. He also conducts workshops to show people how to be themselves. It sounds crazy. But it’s not as easy as it seems.
“I teach them to live a life that’s unique and genuine to you,” Williams said.
“It’s interesting that this is needed but it’s true because most people don’t know how to be themselves.”
As a 21-year-old, the former Heis- man Trophy winner squandered much of his $8.8-million signing bonus on houses and cars. He got wiser. Those houses are gone and he is down to one car (his wife has one too). Although he has enough wealth to do what he wants to do, his money now is spent principally on books, classes and travel. The fifth overall pick in 1999 by the New Orleans Saints, Williams was traded to the Miami Dolphins in 2002. He withdrew for long periods of time from football, citing social anxiety disorder. “I was being defined by everyone around me as a football player,” says Williams. Inside the Many Mansions Spiritual Centre, where he was a guest of spiritual leader Douglas James Cottrell, Williams shuffles into a quiet office and sits down to talk to a reporter wearing a blue Polo top over a white T-shirt. At 240 pounds, he is only five pounds over his playing weight even though he doesn’t exercise except for three weekly games of flag football and some softball. In the future, Williams wants to go to medical school. The world is just too interesting for him to be defined as a former NFL player.
“I didn’t want the fortune and fame,” he says. “I just wanted to be myself.”
He is asked if he sees his life as a journey. He prefers the word “adventure,” because “journey” implies a destination.
“I’m on more of an adventure because it’s about the fun of finding out where else I can go.”