Anna Graybill is a mother, a doula and an Usui Reiki Master Teacher. She is Co-Leader of Salt Lake BirthNetwork and on the board of ImprovingBirth. A doula and a Reiki practitioner since 2005, she is a strong advocate for birthing families both locally and nationally. In 2016 Anna attended the Curtis Method Hypnodoula training. As a queer, polyamorous person Anna enjoys working with diverse populations, including LGBTQ folks and families with alternative structures. Every birth is unique. Anna customizes her birth services to your individual needs and desires. She offers Reiki prenatally, during birth, in the postpartum term and beyond.
Anna has been highly sensitive to energy since she was a child, connecting deeply with the mountains, trees, and canyons that were part of her world, feeling their vibrations and unique personalities. She loved being part of the Mormon spiritual community of her childhood and the emphasis they place on personal communication with the Divine and the sacredness of our physical experiences. As she grew she became fascinated with other religions, particularly their mystical traditions and ecstatic practices such as Sufism, meditation and yoga. The more she learned the more she saw similarities within spiritual traditions and the less she saw Mormonism as being the one true church.
Being so immersed in a patriarchal society and religion left Anna with an intense longing for the Divine Feminine. She scoured scripture for female role models and references to anything feminine. She found some solace in the Mormon concept of Heavenly Mother, the spirit of Wisdom and participating in Mormon feminism. She hoped that the sacred experience of birth and motherhood could illuminate this void.
Anna entered her first pregnancy with great joy and excitement. The power of creation was indeed sacred and beautiful. She loved the transformation of her body and connecting with the new life growing within. Giving birth changed everything. All of her intellectual ideas about having an experience that would reaffirm her connection to a patriarchal, tribal God flew out the window. Instead she surrendered to the Earth below her and the magic of her own body. The raw, primal power of giving birth was transforming. The spiritual aspects of the experience were most certainly profound. Anna wanted everyone giving birth to feel that strength and ecstasy. A few years later she became a doula.
Attending births is a richly instructive laboratory for studying energy. Anna wondered why some births proceeded so smoothly and peacefully and others seemed blocked with many obstacles. Some mothers embraced the birth energy and seemed to be in bliss, others looked more like they were engaged in an intense, painful battle. After a particularly difficult birth with a survivor of sexual trauma Anna felt truly helpless. She could see how the birthing energy was not being released into the pelvis to push the baby out. This mom was laboring fiercely with everything she had and all the midwifery and doula support possible were not enough to ease the mom’s suffering. This was when Anna decided to learn Reiki so that she would have one more tool to offer during childbirth. Since then Anna has used Reiki to help many people heal and prepare for birth. She has seen her clients release emotional blocks and work through fear as well as heal past traumas. Anna loves combining the wise, gentle, healing energy of Reiki with the creative, primal, transformative energy of pregnancy and birth.
Anna Graybill 