WASHINGTON -- After undergoing surgery following a vicious attack last month, Michael Joel Hall awoke from sedation to discover that his friends, fellow yoga teachers and much of the D.C. community had been rallying behind him.
Hall, an uninsured yoga instructor who was attacked in an alleged hate crime while walking late at night in the Eckington neighborhood with his partner, was worried that he wasn't going to be able to pay for the surgery to his face and head -- including the insertion of steel plates.
"I knew that I was up you-know-what creek and this might be how I lost my last paddle," Hall wrote this week on the website of MiDCity Yoga, the studio he runs.
However, the efforts of the yoga community have swept these worries away. Hall announced on the blog that he no longer needs donations.
Hall blogged a message of gratitude and victory to all who assisted and supported him.
"Your generosity is more than I could have ever imagined, and it is with puffy cheeks of joy I say: We’re covered," he wrote, adding that the money that supporters raised will be enough to pay for all his medical bills as well as follow-up care, lost wages and even moving himself and his partner into a new apartment -- Hall's former Logan Circle apartment burned down in June.
Fundraising efforts were spearheaded by Hall's friends and fellow yogis, Mike Graglia and Peg Mulqueen and embraced by others in the local yoga community as well as those as far away as Puerto Rico and Montana.
Hall wrote that Graglia and Mulqueen "are both getting capes," and invited all supporters to perform sun salutations at a mass yoga session at Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park at 5 p.m. on Sunday .
Though he did not yet know how much money would be left over, Hall promised to donate any extra funds to a good cause, and vowed to move forward as a "survivor-advocate."
"I'm not exactly sure what cause I'm ready to champion with whatever money is left over (I think you'll forgive me, I've known for less than 3 hours!), but I’ll be sure to let y'all know as soon as I know. There is always more good to be done," he wrote, adding that despite the doctor's orders to not make faces, he was smiling and crying as he typed.