WEIRD AND WONDERFUL:

FOOTBALL STAR RICKY WILLIAMS' AMBITION IS TO BE A YOGI MASTER

Maybe it's the dense aroma of the incense, or the diaphragmatic
breathing, or the freakiness of meditating with NFL superstar Ricky
Williams, but my head is spinning.

Keith Pelley, president of the Toronto Argonauts football team and
Mr. Williams' current boss, is with us too. The three of us are
sitting in a row, in lotus position, in the curtained, second-floor
meditation room of Mr. Williams' midtown Toronto home. We've just
finished a light dinner of vegetable stir-fry.

I'm still feeling a little self-conscious that my own appetite would
appear to be much heartier than that of the legendarily athletic,
220-pound, Mr. Williams.

"People eat too much food," Mr. Williams said over dinner. "Food is
actually a very low source of energy and sustenance. Oxygen is the
best source. The sun is also a great source. And after that, the
right kinds of food -- when digested properly. And then water."

Mr. Williams does not drink alcohol or eat meat. Although his day job
involves playing a sport wherein large groups of men hurl themselves
at each other, often times with the consequence of crushing each
others' bones, the gentle-voiced Mr. Williams explains: "For
spiritual reasons, I can't justify taking an animal's life to feed me
since I don't have to eat meat to live."

Having achieved lightness of body after our little meal, it is now
time to cleanse our minds.

Mr. Williams illuminates the meditation room with a ghee-burning
lamp. We sit before the deity-laden altar.

Mr. Pelley, who has been more than a little influenced by Mr.
Williams' Ayurveda lifestyle, guides us through a relaxation
exercise. He is urging us to push our worries and the toxins that
poison our systems out of our bodies, via our scalps.

Although the concept behind this exercise is to clear the mind of all
extraneous thought, here is what I am actually thinking: As the wife
of one of the owners of the Toronto Argonauts, I've met no small
number of football players. But never one quite as weird and
wonderful as Ricky Williams.

The sad thing about Mr. Williams is that it is hard not to feel that
his gift is also his curse. For while his astonishing football
ability has allowed the 29-year-old Californian to raise himself up
from hardship, to earn his fame and fortune, it has also entrapped
him into a life -- and an occupation -- that he appears not to love.

For those not familiar with Mr. Williams' tale, here is the back story.

In 1999, Mr. Williams, a graduate of the University of Texas and a
Heisman Trophy winner, was drafted with great fanfare by the New
Orleans Saints.

At the age of 21, he negotiated a signing bonus worth $5-million, and
was driving around town in a Ferrari. By the age of 25, he was
considered one of the greatest running backs in the NFL, averaging
1,500 yards a season.

By this time he had been traded to the Miami Dolphins and was
pocketing a multi-million dollar salary. But his enthusiasm for
football paled against his infatuation with marijuana.

Mr. Williams' dedicated drug use lead to repeated suspensions from the NFL.

In 2004, he shocked the sports world by quitting the Dolphins
altogether to hang out on the beaches of Australia to listen to the
"whispering of his soul."

It was a reckless move and when I ask Mr. Williams if pot was truly
more important to him than his career, he replies: "Well, you can say
the pot smoking was more important to me. But it really was that
not-being-stressed-out was more important to me."

After his stint in Australia, Mr. Williams moved on to India, and it
was there that he first became fascinated with Ayurveda. After
spending a month in an ashram, Mr. Williams discovered that yoga and
meditation were a superior portal to inner peace.

"I matured," he says. "I outgrew marijuana. I found yoga and then I
didn't need marijuana any more."

Mr. Williams had found his serenity but there was a hitch: His
contract with the Dolphins.

The team sued. The judgment was that Mr. Williams owed the Dolphins
$8.6-million worth of playing time.

At the start of the 2006 season, Mr. Williams returned to Miami to
fulfill his legal obligations.

Then he failed another drug test, and received a one-year suspension
from the NFL. (Mr. Williams insists the test was faulty as he was no
longer using marijuana at that time.)

At this point, Mr. Williams turned to his guru, his "life coach," for
guidance. Mr. Williams shows me her picture. She is a 55-year-old
monk, a former Montreal librarian of Vietnamese origin, whom Mr.
Williams met at an ashram near Sacramento, Calif. When Mr. Williams
was first "led to her" two years ago, she knew nothing about football
nor the fame of her pupil. But it was due to her urging that Mr.
Williams accepted a one-season contract with the Argos.

"I was planning to teach yoga, and live in an ashram 24/7," Mr.
Williams explains. "And then I was contacted by the Argos and my
teacher sat me down. We had a talk about karma and about my real purpose."

"She believed that playing for the Argos would help you with your
purpose?" I wonder.

"Well, she understands that because of the lawsuit with the Dolphins,
I need to play two more years in Miami, and that with me -- because
I'm such an intense person -- if I spent a year teaching yoga, I
probably would not go back and play football. My mind would be so far
into the spiritual, it would be difficult for me to come out of it.
And so that was one of the things she pointed out. And the second
thing was it would have been more difficult to do the family thing if
I was teaching yoga all year."

Two months ago, Mr. Williams' fiancee, a southern beauty named
Kristin Barnes, gave birth to Mr. Williams' fourth child, a daughter
named Asha. He and Kristin also have a four-year-old son named
Prince. As well, Mr. Williams has two other children by two other women.

When the Argos signed Mr. Williams this summer, his "purpose" from
their point of view was to provide a little bit of stardust, and
deliver touchdowns.

Things got off to a slow start, and during his fifth game, Mr.
Williams snapped his arm.

He calls the breaking of his arm "a gift."

That's not what my husband and his partner called it, but Mr.
Williams' broken arm gave him the time to restore his "balance"
"after the two most difficult years of his life."

"I've surrendered my life to my life," he says. "I understand that
everything has a purpose. It's just up to me to find the purpose in it."

As a man of studied humility, I ask Mr. Williams, who has graced
multiple covers of Sports Illustrated and other magazines, if fame
can ever be enjoyed in a healthy way.

"No," he replies. "Because it's not real. The attention that fame
brings is so tempting, so powerful, to have any kind of true peace or
happiness, you have to be very vigilant and very careful. You can't
enjoy fame without having some reverence for how powerful it is, you
don't want to get wrapped up in it and trapped into it."

When Mr. Williams' career in football finally ends -- however and
whenever that happens - his next ambition is to become a yogi master.

Part of the training process requires Mr. Williams to teach other
aspirants. "Whoever comes to me," he says.

Mr. Williams teaches at a yoga centre in Toronto. And I suppose by
letting us meditate with him, he is teaching Mr. Pelley and me too.

"But if you tell people that you meditate, they immediately think
that you're strange," complains Mr. Pelley.

"Yeah," replies Mr. Williams. "Well, with me, they already think I'm
strange. But I am. I understand that."

"You really think you're strange?" I ask him.

"No," says Mr. Williams, "I think everyone else is strange."

"Why?"

"I guess it's the same thing that makes me strange: I'm not like
people and people aren't like me."