I have been doing yoga for years and I have found it always helps me if I am feeling depressed. As a yoga teacher I have also seed the positive effect on students who are depressed. So this week's gathering on yoga for depression is interesting to me.

I was in Sao Paulo Brazil last week and was amazed at how large a city it is - 19 million people - 4th largest metro areas in the world. The subway system rivals the one in NYC for size, different lines and number of passengers packed into the trains. But the system is much newer than New York's. Another similarity to NYC is the number of coffee shops and bars with tattooed tweens hanging out smoking wearing lots of black clothes! There is also a big art and high fashion scene here. And the cost of downtown apartments rivals Manhattan. But overall the city is more relaxed and happy than NY. Though I heard from a New Yorker that I met at John of God that New Yorks twin passions of success and pleasure have become a bit stale in the last year and that there is more searching for meaning. Perhaps that is partly why OWS started there.

I have found Brazilians to be very helpful to me and others. One example I was waiting in a bus for the airport (it was a 30 minute wait outside a hotel to pick up other passengers) and a guy asked if the bus could get him to the airport for a flight in a hour. The bus driver friendly said no, but offer to drive him (in the bus) to a taxi stand 4 blocks away so that he could make the flight. We then returned to the hotel to pick up the other passengers. Only in Brazil! :-)

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