Ive been getting a lot of, You look great. But Im not tired of hearing it yet, says 29-year-old yoga teacher Michael Joel Hall as he flashes an endearing grin. A little puffiness on his right cheek and a tiny scar obscured by the stubble of a beard are the only visible reminders of what happened to Hall in the early hours of July 22.

He and his partner, Michael Roike, were returning home to Eckington from a night out when the couple was jumped. The attackers were scared away by a neighbor, but not before their barrage of punches left Hall with a fractured jaw and other facial injuries. Hall and Roike had just moved to the neighborhood after their Logan Circle apartment and most of their possessions had been destroyed in a fire a month earlier.

Vicky Hallett

Writes for the MisFits column.

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To add insult to his injuries, Hall had let his health-care coverage lapse while studying in India this year. So he was faced with covering the ambulance, emergency room, reconstructive surgery and everything else out of pocket. Couple that with not being able to work, and Hall found himself in a rather uncomfortable position.

I asked the doctor if maybe we didnt need to do the surgery, says Hall, who was told that not doing it would leave him with a sunken eye. All I could think about was how much it was going to cost.

The yoga community was thinking about that, too. Instructors are focused on meeting their immediate needs, because no one is getting rich teaching yoga, says Peg Mulqueen, a friend and fellow yogi who helped organized a fundraising drive for Hall.

In his five years of teaching, Hall has developed a devoted student base with his not-so-serious approach to some seriously hard yoga (he specializes in Ashtanga). So it wasnt a surprise that the local community rallied around his cause, with studios and students pitching in. No one, however, expected such an overwhelming response, or that it would bring in money and messages from around the globe.

When Hall was in the hospital, he was inundated with letters, flowers, Facebook messages and a queue of visitors carrying balloons, blankets and ice cream. And on July 31, just a few days after he was released, he was able to respond with a post on his Web site, Midcityyoga.com: No more donations, please.

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Yoga teacher recovers, but attack highlights job’s health-care issues