Social Workout

My Body

Michael Hayes on Yoga Thinking and Being the Biggest Person in Class

Michael Hayes

Michael Hayes is a massage therapist, yoga teacher, and the founder of Buddha Body Yoga.

I don’t look at yoga as a workout. I look at it as something else. I’m exploring the inside of my body and teaching the gray matter of my brain. I’m opening up new ways to think, and the more ways I think, the more I am capturing different possibilities.

I’ve been a massage therapist for around 15 years, and I really got into yoga maybe 14 years ago. I went to this class, and it basically kicked my ass. I was a martial artist and had been a martial arts teacher, and I was so taken aback by how this was doing me in. We did jump backs and handstands, and I was like, "Excuse me?" I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. But I refuse to let things kick me in the butt, so I went back and decided to study.

I was always the biggest person in the class. It’s changing now, but generally speaking, it takes a lot of chutzpah to be a bigger person walking into a yoga class. I would be in the back, and I could just see the way the teachers would look at me and think "What do I do with this guy?" But then I'd have my blocks and stuff, and they'd figure out quickly that I was just fine. 

I wanted to do a class for just big people to get them comfortable enough, and breaking down their postures then building them back up, so they could go to any yoga class and feel comfortable. The biggest problem with people of size is to get the weight off the body so you can get into postures. It’s very slow and sensorial work. I use blocks, bolsters, belts, chairs. We do spinal twists on the floor. We build onto that kind of work and use belts to help people stretch out their legs. And I’ve been working on the Great Yoga Wall. It’s like the Iyengar wall but you can play with them at different angles. I flipped over those. 

There’s the outward of how it looks and the inside of how it feels. Some people get so much into the feeling that they miss something. Some people get so into how it looks that they miss something. It’s not just the alignment the teacher is giving you. You have to figure out why things are working or not working. The teacher might say a pose is about your hamstrings and you think you can't do it because you have tight hamstrings, so you work and work on your hamstrings. But it isn’t really that you have tight hamstrings — you have a gut that's in the way, and you have to release your back. So self-evlauation, a home practice, that's how you figure out what’s going on. 

Yoga and massage are my passion. I love it. They both help people to get in contact with their bodies. For big people, that’s a big deal, especially for some big people who aren't used to being touched. Yoga and massage are an emotional deal.

I'm always writing down things I hear. Here's one. "What does a raisin say to a watermelon?"You’re fat." And the watermelon says, "No I’m a watermelon." That one is perfect for me.