Bahay Kalipay

When Bahay Kalipay opened in 2007, raw food living was not a conversation in the Philippines. It was barely a concept. The property’s co-founders arrived at a moment when the idea was genuinely unconventional and built what became a first: a community of healers, seekers, artists, and teachers gathered around a shared conviction that the body knows how to heal when it is given the right conditions. Nearly two decades later, thousands of guests from more than forty nationalities have passed through and added something to the space.

The property in Santa Monica, Puerto Princesa, grows around a backyard garden of papaya, passion fruit, guyabano, coconut, avocado, moringa, lemongrass, sweet potato tops, and free-range chickens producing organic eggs. What grows in the garden reaches the raw food kitchen, where dehydrators, blenders, fermented foods and drinks, and the resident raw food chef produce living cuisine that guests are warmly invited to watch, learn, and participate in making. The patio café is shaded and open-air, with views of surrounding mountains and long evening sunsets. The rooftop sun deck on the fourth floor of The Peak holds daily yoga and dance sessions with a view that stretches across Honda Bay to the horizon, where both sunrise and sunset are visible.

Inner Dance, perhaps the property’s most significant contribution to the global healing world, was not designed or invented in the conventional sense. It was received. One of the co-founders walked away from a successful career in advertising, followed something he could not yet name to a deserted northern Palawan beach, and in the solitude and stillness there encountered a vibration, a clarity, the beginning of what would become Inner Dance. Since the early 2000s, this somatic awakening practice has reached more than ten thousand people across forty nationalities, trained coaches globally, and reached healers, educators, medical practitioners, corporations, and NGOs across Europe, America, and Asia. It was born on this island, in this community.

The retreat programmes range from the Deep Nature Cleanse, a guided reset of body and nervous system through raw food, rest, and detox, to the Palawan Nature Retreat, oriented toward life transitions and reconnection, to the Wellness Yoga Programme, and a Holistic Self-Care format for shorter stays and first-time visitors. Holistic Lifestyle Coaching is available individually for guests who want personal guidance without a formal retreat structure. Gentle colonics are offered in the dedicated spa and detox room, alongside massage therapy combining deep relaxation with pressure-point work. Nature trips visit Talaudyong beach and Nagtabon, the Palawan that travellers cross the world to see, met without the crowds.