My friend and teacher Amin Nasr, writing under his teaching name Sensei Yula, has just published a book coauthored by his fellow teacher Becca Mukti.
Here is a link to the book order page of their site:
http://www.centrefortheways.com/books.html
Amin is a master of martial arts and of eastern energy arts, dietary science, meditation, and physical fitness regimens, whose great teaching style, real knowledge, and potent energy, had a very positive and pragmatic effect on myself and many others I know. Amin is much influenced by early exposure to the Sufi way.
Though he has for a long time now been based in Toronto, some know him from Halifax as the man who started the health food hangout, Khyber Cafe (where I and my pal Chris Lowe worked as teenagers), which used to be on the ground floor of the Barrington St. building still known to Halifax locals as The Khyber Building, which is the centre of a thriving arts community. To my knowledge at that time Amin also started Halifax’s first health food store, The Bean Sprout*.
*As can be seen from the exchange below Amin actually started a health food store called Supernatural Foods, probably not quite the first–which still appears to be The Bean Sprout, started by a couple met by the person who posted, Marie. Going into this topic has caused me to reflect and recall how big a deal ‘health food’ used to be, like it was from another planet–things like veggie burgers and felafels were still strange novelties in the eighties, at least in Halifax.
Simon Vigneault's Blog 
Feb 06, 2011 @ 15:39:54
I believe it went something like this…….
In the late 90’s, during a conversation over dinner in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Simon V. a long time friend spoke of a man who impacted his life tremendously and this caught my interest. He spoke passionately of how he was a father figure to him and how he generously shared his knowledge of a “way”, “do” or “tao”.
The “way” he spoke wasn’t a traditional “way” and had much ridicule towards it in the”normal realm of things” at that time and space. It was intriguing and inspired me to search this particular knowledge. This man (Amin Nassr/sensai) once lived in Halifax and now runs a Healing Arts school in Ontario. I packed my bags and set off for Ontario to investigate the school. The school was a fit and the teachings from Amin Nassr changed my life and have led me to where I am today, helping others. I’m very excited to read the book and to share it with many people.
Feb 06, 2011 @ 22:18:13
Hey Monique!
Yeah it’s so great that you leapt into that opportunity and how it paid off for you and for the people you are giving a boost up daily.
I remember that conversation, though inexactly. I guess we must have been talking about how the alternative healing arts–particularly back then though considerably less so now–don’t get their fair shake or are even ridiculed. Usually only main centres are more receptive, like Toronto (though Halifax is more open now, perhaps due in part to its large Shambhala Buddhist community), where Amin moved and you are, and where Amin is highly respected as a teacher’s teacher empowering people in their accredited careers as acupuncturists, massage artists, martial artists, etc. And we love him for being suspicious of ‘the guru thing’–which is part of what makes him a great teacher.
Thanks for sharing that! : )
Nov 05, 2011 @ 14:45:14
I want to say that it was NOT Amin who had started Halifax’s first healthfood store called “The Bean Sprout” because my husband and I had just moved to Dartmouth in 1970 and had walked into that store on Barrington Street where we met a lovely young energetic couple who said that they had just opened their health food store that very week. They operated it for a few years until moving their location one of the side streets near the Armdale Rotary which now has an Asian store. We often wondered what ever happened to that young married couple.
Nov 05, 2011 @ 15:34:30
I stand corrected! : )
Actually just the other day I was in Super Natural Foods–now I know he started and owned that one originally, before selling it. I was never very clear on how many stores he had, and just assumed it was the Bean Sprout that was the first one that he owned, but it sounds like it was just the one, Super Natural Foods, that he owned (and Khyber Cafe), as obviously you are right and it was that couple you met who started The Bean Sprout. I realize now with your bringing this up that I murkily seemed to think that the Bean Sprout was the original name of Amin’s health food store before he changed it to Super Natural Foods, which is incorrect. I was only ever inside Super Natural Foods. Shows what little I know. ; ) It could very well be that The Bean Sprout came on the scene before Supernatural Foods (that’s the lore I had in my head obviously, come to think of it–‘The Bean Sprout was the first’). Super Natural Foods is now in the Hydrostone Market area of north end Halifax and also features an excellent cafe, I was pleased to find. Thanks for setting the record straight Marie.