The career-span of the American Running Back isn't all that long. It's a body-jarring, injury-plagued position, and that's why the Ricky Williams story is so compelling: not only has Williams overcome a heck of a lot of self-sabotage and a crippling case of social anxiety disorder, but he's playing like a 25-year-old at 32 while contemporaries like Edgerrin James find themselves pushed out by younger, fresher bodies.
Much, of course, has been made of Ricky's more eccentric habits, including the strict vegan diet, meditating, and acupuncture he credits for feeling so good. And then there's that whole night career passing out rubdowns and answering to "Errick," which is, in Internet parlance, sorta lulzy.
But the thing is, if acupuncture and celery make him a better Dolphin, well, who cares? Let Ricky be Ricky, because a chanting, celery-chomping Ricky with needles sticking out of his body is a Ricky who's rushed for over 100 yards three times this year.
But apparently, Ricky being Ricky is even farther out there than we thought. As far, in fact, as a prana-practicing healer in Orange County, California.
"Ricky will send me a text message saying, for example, to work on his ankle,'' [prana practitioner Daniel] O'Hara said....[he] will then "visualize Ricky's ankle as if he's standing in front of me. I visualize him glowing. I make a sweeping motion over my ankle to remove the dirty energy from his ankle that's creating an abnormality and give his body fresh, revitalizing energy.''
"Ricky could be doing anything when I'm doing this -- watching TV, sleeping,'' O'Hara said. `"It's like a voodoo doll. I know it sounds strange.''
O'Hara said Williams then text messages him indicating how the body part feels. "He says it's a four, and I'll try to get it to a 10. It takes me four minutes with Ricky because he meditates and has positive energy. It could take 25 minutes with somebody else. He's special.''
...O'Hara said when Williams sprained an ankle in the first Jets game, "The second I saw that on TV, I started working on him, and when he got back to the sideline, he was fine. He figured I was doing something. I can feel what is going on in his body.''
Okay, seriously, no disrespect to Mr. Williams, but that's just really, really weird. O'Hara said between meditation sessions on Thursday night he was listening to the Dolphins game on the radio, and cleaning dirty energy from Ricky as needed, which...you know, on second thought, the man did score three touchdowns and he's 32 years old. The only question we have now is: does this work in reverse? Because there's about thirty thousand Dolphins fans ready to visualize Tom Brady and sweep all that dirty energy right onto that pansy-armed pretty boy.
Let us know, Mr. O'Hara. We're ready and waiting.
