Yoga Privates & Central Nutrition – personalised yoga and nutrition sessions

In order to be the best you, there are many pieces of the wellbeing pie chart that need to be taken care of, including your emotional and mental state, and your nutritional, physical and spiritual life. Monica Proctor had just this pie chart in mind when she founded her two companies, Central Nutrition and Yoga Privates, and her holistic approach to life centres on helping others to find balance and happiness in all aspects of life.

Central Nutrition, a dietary consultation firm helping people focus on their nutritional needs, is not only a place to plan your grocery list, it’s also where you can go to talk about your feelings. Emotions and food can be a vicious cycle: you eat certain foods because you’re feeling a certain way and these foods in turn affect how you feel. Monica will walk you through how not to let your emotions rule your grocery bags, plus she’ll help you make meal plans, give advice on how to add healthier food to your diet, and simply let you talk it all out. Minus the leather couch and the yellow notepad, Monica is great at listening to what’s important to you, then making suggestions for how to improve your food choices with your budget, dietary needs, and desires in mind.

In order to get the whole-body experience, Monica also started Yoga Privates. If you’re the type of yogi who prefers hiding in the back row, who always choose the mat furthest away from the instructor or behind the largest person in class, then Yoga Privates isn’t for you! But, if you enjoy one-on-one contact or truly want to improve your yoga practice, then you’ve found the right place!

Yoga Privates is an intimate yoga experience with one instructor and either just you or a couple of your friends (I went with Hester). Before attending class, Monica emailed me a questionnaire about my past yoga history and what I wanted to get out of the class. She used this information to find an instructor who fit my needs and my time schedule.

Because this yoga practice is all about you, there are many options. Classes can be taught in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Tagalog, or Hindi; another cool factor is that you can choose where your class is held. Maybe you have a great rooftop space at home, maybe your company has an extra office just dying to be used or maybe your gym would allow you to use their studio. If none of these are great options – and believe me, they weren’t for me either because I live in a 330 sq. ft. apartment, work at a school where 8 year olds would be watching me do yoga, and I don’t have a gym membership! – then Yoga Privates can rent out a studio for you. You can even offer your suggestions on what type of music you want to be playing!

The best part of one-on-one yoga instruction is that it’s catered to your needs and wants. Do you prefer yoga, Pilates, or a mix of both? Do you want to focus on a certain type of yoga? Is there a specific body part causing you trouble? Because I have the hips of a grandmother, I told our instructor Dawn (trained in yoga and Pilates) that I’d like to focus on hip openers and that I wanted to perfect basic yoga poses, whilst Hester needed a class catered to her being pregnant (see her article here).

We met at Studio on Queen’s (55 Queen’s Road Central) where Dawn had set up mats and props for us and was prepared with questions to ensure we would get the most out of our experience, with class lasting an hour. Because there were only two students, any modifications could be made straight away. At times, it was almost too intimate because there was nowhere to hide; I definitely recommend having a friend tag along so you can catch glimpses and smirks in the mirror, share in a bit of comic relief and have partner poses created for you.

If you’re looking for individual attention in all aspects of your life, then Monica Proctor’s two businesses are the place to call!

Yoga/Pilates classes are $650-800 a class (depending on the location of the class) for 60 minutes; prices for nutrition class vary depending on how often you’d like to visit.

Contact Monica Proctor for your Nutrition consultation or one-on-one yoga by calling 6504 4280 or emailing [email protected] OR [email protected].

www.central-nutrition.com, www.yoga-privates.com