FERAL PILATES CREATION STORY: IT IS WITHIN THE WOUND WE FIND THE MEDICINE

WHAT IS FERAL PILATES & PHYSICAL THERAPY IN SIARGAO?

Feral is a space for rehabilitating and optimizing your flesh suit through movement and mind-body connection with Physical Therapy and Pilates.

Feral’s vision is to honor the part of you that is untamed, unashamed, and instinctive by nature. For you to remember that you have wings that spread far beyond the world’s expectations of you. That you have direct access to your Soul’s deepest Desires and Intuitions.

In a podcast episode between two subspecialized doctors, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, nephrologist, and Dr. Zach Bush, endocrinologist, they discuss how the Western medical system often works in isolation and sub-isolation, treating diseases for how and where they are manifesting in the human body and not the series of events that unraveled for it to manifest in the first place.

At Feral, our mission is to provide you with holistic care and to be a part of every stage of your journey. Our focus includes:

• Injury and disease prevention through Pilates and Siargao Biohacking in Vultun (coming July 2025) – ensuring that you reach your most elevated self—mind, body, and Spirit. In tune with your holistic nature as a complex human being.
• Rehabilitation and recovery through recent Evidence-Based Physical Therapy intervention—as humans, we are not immune to injury and disease. At Feral, know that you will not be alone in your journey, and we are here with the skilled hands and the open heart that you search for.
• Post-recovery optimization using Pilates for long-term well-being. Because your journey doesn’t end at recovery, we believe you are infinitely expansive. We also offer holistic massage for myofascial therapy.

Quick Links

In this 20-minute read, you will find:

1. Personal journal entries by yours truly – link
2. Inspiring quotes from books that I pull my philosophies – link
3. My heart’s journey and yearnings that have led me to where I am in my practice today – link
4. A peek at how my romance with Jay unraveled – link
5. Special Infographics on:
   1. Pilates Vs. Schroth Method – link
   2. The Anatomy of the Pilates Breathing Technique – link

   WHO AM I TO SAY I HAVE A GIFT TO SHARE?

   I do not.

   But I believe in being free, raw, and boundless in my own path. I believe in Feeling Fully into all of life’s fluxes and flows. That, to me, is the purpose of life – and this is me doing just that with 100% of my being.

   This is my invitation to you. To embrace your natural self, break away from constraints and conformity, and take the road less traveled.

   

   I am not the kind of person who takes a lot of time making decisions. I do what feels right in my heart with full faith in the wise knowing of my Spirit – my Intuition.

   And through this impulsive and fiery nature, I find myself here now.

   A Philippine Board Certified Physical Therapist and Merrithew Toronto trained Stott Pilates instructor with years of experience in hospitals and studios in all three major islands of the Philippines and Southern California.
   

   

   

   My Philosphy

   My Philosophy is heavily influenced by Carl Jung’s 1950 publication, “The Psychology of Transference,” in which he discusses how a therapist’s inner wounds and capacity for self-reflection influence their therapeutic process.

   

   Jung wrote, “As a therapist, I constantly have to ask myself what kind of message the patient is bringing me. What does he mean to me? If he means nothing, I have no point of attack. The therapist is only effective when he himself is affected. When the therapist wears his personality like a coat of armor, he has no effect.”

   This is what this quote means to me:
   

   • Healing is a two-way process—with healthy boundaries, both patient and therapist can experience growth.
   • Patients are more than just clinical cases; their experiences can mirror deeper truths in the therapist’s life.
   • Therapists should reflect on how a patient’s struggles resonate with their own inner world.
   • Professional detachment or intellectual superiority limits a therapist’s ability to genuinely help.
   • True connection requires openness—trying to remain unaffected creates a barrier to meaningful healing.

   I Am Not A Healer, I Am Merely Your Guide

   THE WOUND THAT BLED THE PROMPT

   In the cold British Columbia winter of 2017, I was sick with a viral infection that manifested as a sore throat. I didn’t think much of it. I went on to work and study. I was at university, majoring in physics at the time. I continued to ignore this sore throat for 2 weeks until I woke up suddenly crippled with a sharp pain in my heart. My mother brought me to the hospital.

   Once out of the ER and admitted, the doctor confirmed I had vasculitis – an autoimmune response to an untreated virus. My body was on overdrive, attacking the virus, and started attacking itself. Vasculitis, by definition, is a physiological process of inflammation. This had caused the blood in my capillaries to leak into my skin, kidneys, and joints. I was so close to becoming a dialysis patient at only 18 years old. The lining of my heart was stretched beyond its threshold. I had never experienced pain of that immensity -even unmedicated childbirth does not compare (which I will get into later).

   I will not share pictures of myself from this time, but this is essentially how Vasculitis presents in the human body:
   

   

   The Whisper

   But in the Pain was an Initiation. I felt the Pain as a bright white light in my being – a conduit to higher wisdom. This was the moment when I first heard the whisper of my intuition. Lying on a cold hospital bed in the dark. I heard a consciousness inside me say:

   “Your body is all you truly have to exist and operate in this physical plane. Nothing else matters.”

   Suddenly, every nurse and doctor who entered my room was the most beautiful people I had ever seen, simply because they were healthy.

   This was when I realized I had to admit I was no good at Physics. I had to do something for which I felt a true passion—something to do with elevating the human experience through optimizing the vessel in which the Spirit resides—the Body.

   THIS is why I do what I do. Because I know what it is like to be in pain and to lose basic function. I do it out of empathy for those experiencing illness or loss of function. And because I believe in the raw beauty of the human body. How down to the smallest physiologic response – it innately knows what to do. Breaking down food, healing a wound, fighting a virus, gestating and birthing a child, and all its cyclical wonders. There is an innate, inexplicable intelligence that lives inside all of us. And it is my dying desire to use this life in service to honor that inexplicable intelligence.

   Returning to the Child

   I was the last of 4 children in my family. My age gap with my sisters was big. I love them very much, but we simply did not relate to each other. They were much cooler than I was.
   
   I had my own world. I played with the 30 fish, the 20 dogs, the cat, the peacock, and the tortoise my family had at the time. I climbed the mango tree and wrote letters to her. Leaving them on her branches as if she were my friend. I’d build fires, bury my feet in the mud, and keep my hair long down to my sacrum. Absolute abandon. At one point, I had fleas on my scalp. That’s how uninhibited I was in my communion with the Earth.

   Later in my childhood, my family moved to Vancouver, and I realized how big the world is. I learned to speak English as my native tongue and quickly assimilated into the city’s culture. I was allowed to have and be anything I wanted, with everything in the West readily available for consumption – art, learning resources, creature comforts. To play in old-growth forests and to touch moss at my fingertips. To drink glacial waters. To go to University. To already be middle class at just minimum wage. It was a gift.

   

   But my heart felt a calling somewhere else. When I was at the threshold of my breaking point with my Vasculitis, I wanted to return to the Philippines. I wanted to commune with the Earth as I knew it—to remember who I was as a child, my default before the fancy decoration that is the Western world.

   

   BECOMING A PHYSICAL THERAPIST IN SIARGAO

   Coming back to the Philippines, one of the first things I saw was a child working in a coal mine. At that moment, I felt his heart go into my body in place of my heart. I felt a pang of longing for something greater. And I feel that every time I see another Filipino in poverty or illness. Why would I do anything if not to serve the land that served my ancestors? To help elevate my Filipino people? I was born of this heritage for a reason.
   
   My Dharma is here.

   

   It was at that moment when I saw that child that I decided I would stay in the Philippines.

   I still had no idea what I wanted to do until my sister, Leona, told me to look at San Pedro College’s Physical Therapy program. I gave it some thought, applied, and made it in.

   But what is a Physical Therapist?

   We are the people who help you restore movement and ease your pain from injury or illness with Western Medicine. Through guided movement, hands-on techniques, and teaching body awareness, we help you recover, move better, and feel stronger.

   I am so thankful for the professors and administrators who taught me with so much patience yet so much discipline. They taught me to not only learn from textbooks but real-life contexts as well, to use standard diagnostic measures but to also hone our clinical eye for observation.

   A good institute comes with high standards. With my rebellious and free-spirited nature, I failed a few classes and was held back for one year, but I kept going. No shortcuts. Just a lot of persistence and humility

   Through it all, here are some of my wins along the way:

   • Led and published a thesis on scoliosis that won multiple awards in 2021.
   • Spent one year doing hospital and community rotations across the southern half of the Philippines. Some notable ones: Southern Philippine Medical Center, Chong Hua Hospital Cebu, General Santos Doctors Hospital, SAKADAB

   

   I spent all of 2023 studying for the national board exam, took it once, and voila, by the grace of the Divine Creator, I passed among the 68% who took it that year. I still don’t know how that happened for me, as I spent much of that year going back and forth between Vancouver, Calgary, Davao, and Siargao. All jokes aside, I did study very hard and meticulously.

   I was henceforth known as Allegra de Borja, PTRP

   Everything finally came back full circle. After my own illness, I found myself dedicating my life to rehabilitating the body from illness or injury. I am a physical therapist in the Philippines, serving the land that served my own ancestors.

   But did I feel the return of the child within? My communion with the Earth as I knew it?
   

   EMBODYING THE INNER CHILD THROUGH LOVE AND SURRENDER (AND A LITTLE DANGER)

   With a suffix at the end of my name, I was still unsure of my next steps. I felt drawn to return to the West, but I felt more called to carry out the sense of purpose I felt in the Philippines.

   At the same time, I found myself swept into the most passionate, fiery romance with Jay, the man who would later make me a mother. When we met, I felt his presence from the moment he walked into the room, before I could see him. I had a somatic response, it felt like the world started turning in the opposite direction for me. He was the drummer of my beating heart.

   I had to say “Hello,” and I did. On our first date, he read me a blessing:

   

   

   It was with him that I felt myself fulfill what I truly came back to the Philippines for—to return to the child within, my default.

   Barefoot, he put me on the back of his black motorcycle, and we drove through the mystical jungles of Siargao to the North of the island. We talked about our fears and desires, just like I would write to my mango tree. We bathed in the bioluminescent ocean under the full moon. We spoke without saying any words. He is my Mirror. I am in full devotion to the same mission: to create Beauty and to live in Love.

   

   

   

   The Shala at Jacking Horse Beach

   We started Vultun to help people reconnect with their truth, become empowered, and optimize their lives to be the best versions of themselves.

   Learn more about Vultun here.

   In this shala, Vultun Wellness was born. In this shala, I started my practice and was finally able to answer all of the calls in my Heart:

   1. To do what I loved most – to spend my time working on and studying the human body
   2. Serving and being in the land of my ancestors
   3. Being connected to the child within

   WHY FERAL PILATES SIARGAO

   Learn more about our brand new Siargao Pilates Studio opening in April 2025.

   In 2020, I started going to rehab at PEAK Physical Therapy in Davao for my own Scoliosis. Scoliosis is defined as an abnormal curvature and rotation of the spine. It affects your posture and, in severe cases, the capacity of your lungs, as the ribs attached to the curved and rotated vertebrae are also misshapen.
   

   This is a picture of my spine before going into rehabilitation at PEAK:
   

   

   From Scoliosis to Pilates

   In only two months, PEAK was able to reduce the curvature of my spine from 21° to 17° with the Schroth method. The Schroth method uses a style of breath specific to each patient, combined with special poses and equipment. I had never felt more inspired—hence the thesis I wrote on Scoliosis.
   
   But as fascinated as I was, I am a free spirit. There is no denying my feminine side, which loves curves and lines in art. To go beyond rehabilitating the human body and create art with it. I found a modality much like the Schroth method, but required a *little* less of my brain and a little more feminine art and flow. Pilates. When I practice Pilates, I remember being a child attending ballet classes with my sister, Yadana.
   

   

   

   Comparison of Schroth Method vs. Pilates

   Going Deeper - Using Pre-Natal Pilates Techniques in Childbirth

   I was in my second trimester of pregnancy when I did my Pilates teacher training. And it is through Pilates (and my amazing OB) that I can say that giving birth was the most empowering experience of my life. With the help of Pilates, I am blessed enough to say that I gave birth unmedicated without an episiotomy or tearing.
   
   Pilates breath and exercise require a lot of focus on the Pelvic Floor. So not only does it improve the sensations in the act of creating life (hint: vaginal gymnastics), but it also makes the birth of life easier as you have more awareness and control in the contraction and relaxation of the muscles necessary in delivery. It also focuses on lateral thoracic breathing, allowing more efficient oxygen intake. Hence, more oxytocin production leads to decreased pain perception in labor.

   Here is a short lesson on the Anatomy of Pilates Breathing. You can use this to prepare for childbirth and the most basic activities of daily living.

   What muscles are involved in Pilates Breathing?

   • Transversus Abdominis: Also known as the corset muscle. Deepest abdominal layer; stabilizes the spine.
   • Pelvic Floor: Supports internal organs and assists in core contraction. Also the centre of vaginal or penile gymnastics. (I will write a blog post about this too)
   • Diaphragm: Primary breathing muscle; controls inhalation and exhalation.
   • Intercostal Muscles: Between the ribs; allow ribcage expansion.

   How to Practice Pilates Breathing?

   1. Step 1: Position Yourself
      1. Sit or lie in a neutral spine position.
      2. Relax your shoulders and jaw.
      1. Expand the sides and back of your ribcage (lateral expansion).
      2. Keep your belly drawn in – no abdominal bulging.
      1. Engage the transversus abdominis (aka. Your corset muscle) (feel your belly gently pull in).
      2. Imagine lifting the pelvic floor upward.

      The Benefits of The Pilates Breathing Technique in Childbirth

      1. Increase pain threshold during contractions in labor by increasing oxygen in your system, releasing more oxytocin in your brain as acetylcholine diminishes. Therefore, decreases sensitivity.
      2. Find strength and awareness of the pelvic floor as you deliver your baby vaginally.

      This is why I feel so passionate about and believe in my work. Because I can attest to it through my own experience, it is not just a workout but a key to longevity.

      COMING FULL CIRCLE

      From the cold hospital bed in British Columbia to the warm embrace of Siargao’s jungles, from illness and uncertainty to finding a calling that aligns with my heart. Through pain, I found purpose. From the wound, I found the medicine. Through love, I found home.

      As a Physical Therapist and a Siargao Pilates instructor, my work is not just about treating pain or correcting posture. It is a sacred offering—a way to honor the human body’s innate intelligence and guide others toward healing and empowerment. Whether helping someone regain movement after injury, supporting a mother through pregnancy and birth, or simply holding space for people to elevate themselves, my mission is to serve with love and create beauty.

      Every session I offer is a reflection of the mirror you present me and everything I have lived through. My practice is my purpose, my return to the child within, and my way of giving back to the land and people who shaped me and my ancestors in the Philippines.

      Again, I do not spend a lot of time making decisions. I honor my intuition. I do what feels right in my heart and give my whole being to it.

      If my story resonates with you, I invite you to step into this journey with me—to experience your body as the Vessel in which your Spirit resides, listen to your intuition’s whispers, and jump head-first into your heart’s callings.

      Join our Pilates classes in Siargao, use your breath, move your body, challenge your mind, and listen to the whispers of your Intuition.

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