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About Ricky
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Ricky was born on May 21, 1977 to humble beginnings in San Diego — The Crib! — where as a high schooler, he excelled at football, baseball and track.
At a very young age, he had an intuitive sense that life is an adventure, and that the highs and lows are therefore expected (and welcomed) as part of the ride. With this understanding, he was able to harness the focus needed to rise to the top on the athletic field while weathering the inevitable storms of life.
His performance as a running back at Patrick Henry High School led to his recruitment by the University of Texas, where he had a record-breaking career and was a two All-American.
In 1998, he was awarded the 64th Heisman Trophy, at the age of 21.
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The Texas Tornado quickly discovered that attaining this kind of success essentially wasn’t enough — or at least what the world tells us all it’s going to be like. For Ricky, many wounds were created during this process of conventional success-attainment. Later, he noticed that when one has continued success, the wounds are often not acknowledged, or considered justified.
At the time, in 1999, the New Orleans Saints traded eight picks for the right to select Ricky in the first round of the draft. It was the first time in NFL history that one player was the only pick for a team’s entire draft class. Three years later, Ricky was traded to the Miami Dolphins in exchange for two first-round draft picks. During his 13-year professional career, Ricky also played for Baltimore Ravens and was a Pro Bowl MVP and the NFL’s Rushing Leader. In 2015, Ricky was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
While the world was celebrating his many accomplishments on the field, performing at American football’s highest level was taking its toll on Ricky’s mind and body. Seeking the best and safest treatment for the accumulating pain and trauma, he found that medical marijuana was the most effective and natural medicine available to treat the wide-ranging injuries he sustained while playing for the NFL. Upon the NFL’s discovery of his cannabis use, Ricky was harshly penalized both reputationally and financially through suspension and millions of dollars in fines and lost salary.
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For Ricky, leaving football was simply a redirection of his talent. Now a sought after-speaker regarding cannabis and its restorative effects (as well as an advocate for its legalization and regulation in the US), Ricky has also devoted himself to mastering other healing modalities, and his approach is with the same intensity and desire to learn and become skillful as he applied to football.
Through years of immersing himself in the study of Ayurvedic medicine in California, yoga and meditation in India, and manual therapies such as the cranial sacral therapy pioneered by the Upledger Institute, Ricky has become known in many circles as a unique healer with both an extensive knowledge base and the first-hand experience of a professional athlete.
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An integral part of Ricky’s approach to healing has come through the study of astrology, which he began in 2004 after living in an ashram during his first retirement from the NFL. Over the years, as he has wrestled with existential dilemmas in his own life, he has found time and time again that astrology offers him insights that have empowered him to transform wounds and traumas into access to internal resources and clarity of purpose.
For Ricky, the evolution of consciousness is a religion, and the
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