Music Producer Michael Eaton Has Been Teaching Yoga For 30 Years

In the 30 years since Michael Eaton began teaching yoga, the Jamaican has never charged his ‘students’. Based in Staten Island, he believes the holistic benefits of the ancient Indian exercise should not be commercial.

Michael Eaton and yoga students at the Unitarian Church of Staten Island, New York. (Contributed photo)Eaton, a Rastafarian who has lived in the United States for over 40 years, is a certified yoga instructor. He has held classes in Brooklyn, his former hometown, and Staten Island and while touting its health benefits, also points to yoga’s communal strengths.

“I taught in Brooklyn, a Russian neighborhood and most of the students were white. I taught in a different neighborhood in Brooklyn and it was a mixture of different nationalities; on Staten Island,  I have Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Vietnamese, whites and blacks,” he said. “Sometimes,  you really don’t know who will show up to a class.”

So successful was his class at the Unitarian Church of Staten Island in April, that administrators there have requested Eaton return for an extra class in May.

Eaton learned the intricacies of yoga from Dharma Mittra, a Brazil-born ‘guru of modern yoga’, whose much-sought Master Yoga Chart contains over 900 postures.

Aware that there are people who believe its healing properties are overstated, Eaton points to the millions of people worldwide signing up for yoga classes as proof of its boundless benefits.

“It offers more blood circulation, more oxygen to your body and it also has codes to live by. Ethics codes called Yamas (first of the eight limbs of yoga) and Niyamas (the spiritual focus of yoga), and it also prescribes a vegetarian diet,” he said.

Eaton was born in St. Ann, a lush parish in north-eastern Jamaica. Most of his formative years were spent in Kingston, the capital, where he discovered Rastafari.

He is also a music producer whose Eaton Music label has released songs by reggae artists from Jamaica and the US.