About Doula For The Soul Foundation
Doula for the Soul Foundation is an unincorporated, not for profit, private enterprise that provides members access to homebirth and freebirth support, natural health modalities, wellness practitioners and support during sacred life passages; from birth to death.
We focus on offering holistic support for your life journey whether it be through pregnancy, childbirth, parenthood, family dysfunction, marital issues or the passing of a loved one.
Why Doula for the Soul?
Doula for the Soul Foundation was formed out a need to see traditional knowledge make its way back into our village as an option alongside the heavily industrialised medical system. We do this by providing you with a network of like-minded colleagues that can support your journey from birth to death.
Overarchingly, we see a crucial need for less reliance on pharmaceutical drug banks, hospitals and the deterioration of health freedoms which outsource your responsibility to heal thyself.
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We look towards the long-lasting benefits of taking responsibility for your own mental and physical health for your family, your community and the wider population and step away from the medical dogma and one-size-fits-all approach.
Having seen public healthcare systems stretched to maximum capacity, we know firsthand the benefits of being able to treat ailments – where able to – in your own home.
In terms of birthkeeping, a major concern we have on Australia’s current healthcare system, especially for birthing mothers, is that if a woman approaches her pregnancy wanting a natural birth with no interventions she may find it difficult to achieve this when birthing within a hospital. As such, we offer support and services for women wanting a homebirth or to freebirth as we see vast limitations in the western model of healthcare for women wanting a supported, empowering birthing experience.
Whenever and however you give birth, your experience will impact your emotions, your mind, your body, and your spirit for the rest of your life
Services
Birth Support
- Equipment hire
- On call birth support
- Vibrational essences and homeopathy
Prenatal Support
- Books and resource library
- Blessingways
- Create your Birth Plan
- In home prenatal visits
- Meditation practice
- Antenatal relaxation massage
Post Partum
- Organisation of meal trains, ayurvedic postpartum meals
- Postpartum remedial massage
- Herbal support, tinctures and homeopathy
- Integration of birth experience
- Mother blessings
- Support on baby wearing and baby massage
- Placenta rituals, including placenta encapsulation
Other Supports
- Miscarriage and abortion support
- Family Constellations & counselling
- Soul support using Evolutionary Astrology
- Ceremony and rituals for transitions
- Kundalini yoga & meditation
- Red Moon Lodges
- Herbal medicine
- Debriefing, grief and trauma support
Meet Our Practitioners
Katrina Gay
Hello, I’m Katrina Gay; founder of Doula for the Soul Foundation. I’m also a mother, wife, counsellor and birthkeeper with 20+ years experience working as a nurse, in particular in the area of mental health and childhood trauma.
One of the main benefits I see for supporting women and families to have an empowering birth experience in their own home is the flow-on effects that ripple out beyond her immediate family.
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The transformation that arrives when a woman owns her strength during the birthing process touches her whole family, her ancestry, the community around her and the culture she is in, rectifying many outdated misbeliefs and skewed perceptions of birth.
These days I no longer work in hospitals as a nurse and have remained unregistered since Covid, however I do continue to serve women, families and the wider community with my experience as a counsellor, educator and birthkeeper.
I also draw upon many practitioner years of being an Evolutionary Astrologer, massage therapist, Kundalini Yoga teaching, Family Constellations facilitator and homeopathy student.
I have learnt enough over the years to know that pregnancy and birth are signs of wellness in a woman, not an illness. For women who want to experience a natural birth, it is a lot harder for them to achieve this when birthing in a hospital without being affected by the medicalisation of childbirth.
What resonates strongly within me now is that our beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves – consciously and unconsciously- have a far greater impact on our sense of wellbeing than any other pharmaceutical, surgical, or medical input can remedy;
“what we do not change, we choose”
I trust in the transformational process that birth facilitates and I help women feel prepared for this sacred rite of passage; from pregnancy, through to birth and beyond into parenting years.
I look forward to supporting you and your family on your journey of self-empowerment, immense change and trusting in the innate healing powers of your own body.
“Having tended to thousands of people in hospitals at their most vulnerable, Katrina now best serves her community working with people within their own homes, surrounded by their village, strengthened by their own sense of agency”
- During a birth I can identify what is a transitional phase and what the birthing woman may need to help her emotionally, and/or physically
- In terms of preparation for your birth, during one of our antenatal sessions we look at building your meditation practice, in turn this helps increase your mental and emotional awareness of any blocks or inner-saboteur that may surface
- 4th trimester preparation based on your own personal requests, including; meal trains, domestic cleaning services, massage, tinctures and healing balms.
- If it is a particular challenge in your role as mother to ask for help, we work on your courage to ask for what you need
- Ceremonial services include; mother blessings, blessingways and closing of the bones massage.
As a doula my main offering to you and your family is my ability to hold space
- I deeply trust in the birthing process and therefore I hold space for you and your family to process whatever is brewing throughout your pregnancy, as well as what may come up during your birth
- My superpower is deep presence
- I bring calm during crisis
- I work with your specific fears and challenges so you can overcome them with confidence
- I draw upon my many years of being a counsellor, nurse, mental health practitioner, massage therapist, Evolutionary Astrologer, Kundalini Yoga teacher, Family Constellation facilitator and homeopathic apprentice to assist you and your whole family.
- I have collected a lot of knowledge and experience over the years in terms of healthcare and wellness, however I do not have all the answers. In each community there is a like-minded village, a database of practitioners to lean on for any services you may need in addition to a birthkeeper.
Tell my Story...
The bridge between birth, death and rebirth is visceral for me; death begets birth, birth is followed by death. The only way through is often to surrender even more to what is beyond our control.
I have come to realise that neither are to be feared and when called to, so much letting go is required to relinquish resistance and fully accept the cycle of life. As thin as the veil between birth and death is, I too could not escape the cycle of life even though I tried initially, when I was in my 20’s my father was dying and I fell pregnant for the first time.
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My father’s death came shortly after my pregnancy loss. Many years later after I had just turned 40 and my daughter was 1 month old, my mother passed away. I was at a point where I felt I needed my mother the most and it was a devastating, bittersweet blow for her to meet my daughter, then two weeks later visit her on her deathbed.
In the months and years following, dealing with the grief and loss of both my parents while learning how to be a mother myself, I am certain that having a beautiful homebirth helped me manage emotionally during a tremendous passage of death, loss and newness.
The continual impact and strength I draw upon from having a positive birth has helped me deal with the added loss of our family estrangement which came during the period of Covid from having marginalised views of the ‘pandemic’.
In retrospect I can see how the transformational life-quake that arrived once I became a mother helped my life’s work fall into alignment, bringing me more clarity and embodied strength to walk this path. Doula For The Soul Foundation was created with an intention to link together and empower those wanting to utilise their inner strength and discover their innate healing abilities. Our approach may be considered radical to some, however I feel birth and sex and death are intrinsically linked and culturally, we do not go to a hospital to have sex.
I do not see sex and birth as separate. In fact, I do not see sex, birth, nor death as disparate from one another. All are so intimate, incredibly powerful, creative and sacred portals we enter. I see them as windows into a moment when your soul is so close to God that you are between worlds. Thankfully we can share our most intimate selves in the privacy of our own homes, I believe birth is a part of this cycle.
However, in Australia, culturally birth is predominantly conducted inside an institution best suited for treating illness. In the absence of having an accepted culture of homebirth, we forfeit our right to celebrate these extraordinary moments in life together with loved ones surrounding us. Having spent thousands of hours being with people at their most vulnerable and most rawest, all with different views and paths to mine, I have come to learn that you cannot impose your beliefs upon anyone else, it will not stick.
The truest gift we can give each other, particularly in a time of dissonance is presence, forgiveness and a sense that we all belong.
To change the world, we must first change the way the babies are being born
Testimonials
“Gosh where to begin, how do I possibly articulate how grateful I am to Katrina for being present at the birth of our second child.
We home birthed our first with a midwife and it was a wonderful experience, my pregnancy was healthy, the midwife said the whole birth was text book and I had no interventions or complications. Based on this I felt confident to free birth with our second child.
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I’ve heard people say every birth is different and so I gave a lot of thought to who I wanted present during the birth. I wanted someone who would stay calm and focus on solutions if anything “out of the ordinary” happened, who knew when to step in and assist, when to stand back and allow, and who could convincingly remind me of my power and ability to birth my children.
Katrina fit the bill for all these things, she is an absolute natural in the birth space and wonderfully knowledgable with both a history in nursing and an ongoing passion for natural health modalities. I would wholeheartedly recommend her services to anyone considering a free birth.”
I found Katrina to be an instant ally as I wondered down the homebirth / free birth pathway, certain that the hospital was not where I wanted to be. Inherent along the way was the severance to all I knew to be the normative birth choices presumed for us, the never-ending midwife visits at the hospital, being assessed and having your bodies abilities predetermined by a tattle of checklists, the tedium of which never got the crux of the ethereal feminine soul devouring conquest of life and death I had been calling for.
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Attempting to share my mounting frustration, heartfelt certainty and seeking clarity for my swirling monkey brain in family, who have in moments held a container of reliance, held gilded walls of fear from unhealed birth traumas buried deep into the shadow side of motherhood.
Cloaked with others fears, looming my birth portal, hearing my babies calls and trusting more into my sacred inner knowing, I relinquished control finally. I bathed in full surrender and gratitude of having an ambulance and the hospital at my fingertips, that I would not place the burden of birth pillars fully upon Katrina and Kevys shoulders, and prepared to meet my baby in my home, my way.
However, the one constant through all of the swirl, trepidations and fierce drumming was Katrina. A singular woman able to hear my call, allow it and meet it. Rallying meal trains, blessing ways, food, working in full servitude to meet my wellbeing needs and the logistics I couldn’t as I prepared for this birth portal.
Little did I know reaching out in early labour for support for my partner would open the door for Trina to enter our birth in her full power. It felt so amazing as she dropped in, opened her homeopathic kit and we were in. Trina held an intrinsic presence with me, keeping me moving, active and connected to process, offerings of food, ice or jelly constant.
Fires were kept burning, men occupied, the home warmed and the space readied. Charlie emerged at 111; an ironic time partially predetermined outside amongst a surge of hormones soaring me giddily into the ether as Trina and I giggled about his point within and when he may emerge, 222 seeming to far away.
He emerged in quick successions from waters breaking to an infinite pause as I felt him cradled and crowned awaiting the next surge in which he came full bodied and hungry into the world. Short corded and a little mucusy he was across my thigh draining and snuggled, pinking up and cord connected, whole, secure and observed with love and vigilance under Trinas clinical priestess eyes.
Through friendship of young motherhood to god squad created as we traversed the portal of birth, secure and held I felt, a blessing for any woman to come into power of self in the unwavering intuitive presence of Katrina.
Acknowledgement
We acknowledge the traditional occupants of this vast land which we practice our work upon and recognise this country was stolen from its first peoples and has been retained by force ever since. These lands have never been ceded to a corporate government.
We pay our respect to elders past, present and future.
