Dark Years of the Soul: Monique Elouise on Kundalini, Trauma and Learning to Hear the Quiet Voice

When Monique was about four years old, her nana started tucking her in at night.

She'd feel the blankets being drawn up across her chest, then a soft press of weight down by her lower legs. She was never frightened by it. The detail that makes the story land is this: her nana had already passed away.

That's how this gift announced itself to Monique Elouise — gently, in the dark, from someone who loved her enough to stay close a little longer. And it's how she opened up on this week's #creativetalk, in one of the richest conversations Kebrasca and I have had in that chair.

WATCH THE INTERIVEW WITH MONIQUE ELOUISE

From a Line of Witches: Where the Gift Began

Monique comes to us from New Zealand by way of Melbourne — a Kiwi, which around here is always a good start. She's a spiritual mentor, teacher and healer who works across a number of modalities, and like so many of our guests, she didn't choose this so much as recognise it.

Her nana was a psychic medium who could see those who'd passed. An aunt on the other side of the family was deeply spiritual too. As a little girl, Monique did the maths the way only a child can: if I come from a line of witches, then I must be one. "I'm going to be magic," she decided. Listening to her now, you get the sense little Monique would be thrilled with how that turned out.

But the gift was forged in harder fire too. She speaks openly about childhood sexual trauma, and about how the work found its shape there — she now often sits with people carrying the same wound, sometimes before they've even named it. That's what drove her toward becoming genuinely trauma-informed: studying the nervous system, regulation, the science underneath the spirit. As she puts it, as healers we always want someone to leave better than they came in. Sometimes that means changing the whole plan the moment they sit down.

Kundalini Awakening vs Kundalini Activation

Kundalini is everywhere online right now, and Monique cuts through the confusion with a distinction most people miss. The two are not the same thing.

A Kundalini awakening is the full rising of the Kundalini shakti — the divine feminine energy — up the spine to meet her counterpart, Shiva. That's the poetic version. The honest version, in Monique's words, is that it's "a sh*t show." Everything not meant for you burns to the ground. Your nervous system goes sideways. It's a dark night of the soul that stretches into years. She received hers as shaktipat — a divine blessing — from a guru in India in 2015, during a 200-hour hatha yoga training, without any idea at the time what she'd been handed or how completely it would rearrange her life.

A Kundalini activation is something else, and it's the work she's most passionate about now. It pinpoints the darkness ready to surface and moves it through the body. You'll often see people make involuntary movements — trauma completing a cycle it couldn't finish at the time. She points to Peter Levine's somatic work, and to the way animals in the wild shake off a threat so they never store it. If you froze in a frightening moment as a child — too small to fight, run or even yell — that frozen action can finally release. She described a woman in a group session who suddenly threw her fists out, swore, thrashed her arms, and afterward had no memory and no idea what it was about. The body knew. The mind had stepped aside to let it happen.

The Body Keeps Score

If that idea sounds familiar, it's because we keep meeting it from every direction on this show. It's the same truth kinesiologist Angela Graham brought us — the body holds what the mind files away, and it will keep the appointment the mouth avoids. Monique works the same territory from a different door.

And like Charles Lowres on energy healing, she's clear that the real work isn't the dramatic moment — it's the integration afterward. Her sessions run around two hours, and she won't pull anyone out before they're ready. Then comes embodiment, breath, sharing circles, a follow-up email of integration practices. She tells clients to keep working with the energy at least every couple of weeks, because it keeps moving through you for days. The ceremony is the smallest part. The integration is the journey. The people who chase the next high — stacking modality on modality, spiritually bypassing their way along — are doing to their healing exactly what burnout does to a career.

Burnout Is Not a Badge of Honour

Which brings us to the thread that ran through the whole hour. We've built a world, Monique says, where exhaustion is a status symbol — "I'm so burnt out" worn like an achievement. The clean line between work and home is gone; we're switched on seven days a week and feel guilty the moment we rest. So we live in survival mode, hypervigilant, disconnected from the body that's quietly sending up the smoke signals — the tight chest, the held breath, the digestive issues we take to a doctor for a pill that silences the symptom and never touches the root.

Her antidote isn't complicated, which is the point. Lying flat with your back on the floor. Gentle pelvic tilts and a moment at the root chakra to remind the body it's safe. A hand on the heart and one on the belly, just to feel that you are a breathing thing. A walk. The unglamorous, grounding, daily stuff — the same note Kate Hammond ended on when she said: get outside, get your feet on the ground.

Coming Out of the Spiritual Closet

The part that hit closest to home was about names. Monique recently dropped a domain she'd held for five or six years — Anahata Reiki and Wellness, with all its built-up traffic and bookings — and rebuilt under her own name. Terrifying, on paper. But the old name had become a place to hide. "I'm not a business, I'm a person," she realised, and stepping out from behind the label was a way of coming out of the spiritual closet for good. Her biggest months followed almost immediately.

Kebrasca sat with that one, because it's his story too — the long walk to putting his own name on his own healing work, no longer afraid of what clients might think of a man who talks to the dead. There's a particular freedom in finally saying, this is me, all of it, take it or leave it — and meaning it kindly rather than defensively.

A few other things we'll be carrying with us: that you don't give your power away to a healer, because it was always a contract you're in together (the same "meet me halfway" truth our guests keep landing on); that intuition is usually a quiet voice, not a booming one, so if you never sit still you'll never hear it — Monique's once told her, at twenty-three, to walk away from a marriage that wasn't hers to enter; and her favourite lesson of all, the one she wishes she'd learned sooner: don't wait until it's perfect. Start messy. The only real failure is not starting.

We closed, as we love to, by pulling tarot for her business — and the cards were emphatic. The Seven of Cups for a month of choices and new offerings (with an oddly specific nudge that she'll be near the sea soon), a month of riches and collaboration after it, and the Lovers to finish — a choice point pushing her deeper into the work, the whole spread quietly laying a foundation for 2027. She just smiled. The breadcrumbs, she said, were already rising to the surface.

Some guests teach you something. Monique reminded us of something we already knew and keep having to relearn: the body knows, the voice is quiet, and you don't have to be finished to be of use.

Find Monique Elouise at moniqueelouise.com and across her socials for consultations, Kundalini activations and upcoming events. Book a reading with Amber at glowbyamber.com or explore Kebrasca's healing work at kebrascaking.com #creativetalk is live every Thursday at 5PM AEST — where consciousness meets commerce.

Lightly edited for readability. #creativetalk with Amber & Kebrasca King, featuring Monique Elouise.

[02:30] Welcome

Hope everyone is having a good day wherever you are in the world. That calm music to open the show is by our hand-pan artist of choice — "Pan Man" — and it's also the music of choice for our cat, Kaiji, who's around here somewhere and may well make an appearance. If you need a little calm added to your day, we recommend him. Welcome to Creative Talk podcast, the place where we blend the worlds of consciousness and commerce. I'm Kebrasca King — and I'm Amber King. Today we're speaking with a spiritual mentor, teacher and healer who works with a number of different modalities. But first, let's catch up on last week.

[03:00] Last week: Robin, the EnterTrainer

On screen you'll see RC Fitness again — last week we had Robin, our personal trainer of many years, sharing his 20-plus years of experience around health, wellbeing and fitness. He also took the mickey out of us a lot, which was amazing — but that's what he does when he trains us. He's the EnterTrainer. We've had heaps of trainers over the years, and the boring or overly serious ones never stuck. With Robin, if he can make it fun and make you smile, the exercise doesn't feel as hard. We could've had him on a lot longer — we may bring him back for a part two, because we've got something big coming up with him.

[04:47] Hyrox

That something is Hyrox — coming to Melbourne around December. Thanks to Robin, we've committed to a fairly crazy training program to get ready. If you don't know it, Hyrox is a global endurance event, a bit like CrossFit but, honestly, harder — for people who aren't CrossFitters, which is us. It's eight kilometres of running broken up by eight workout stations: ski erg, sled push and pull, burpee broad jumps, farmers carry, lunges, wall balls. Neither of us are runners — we can do weights all day. But we're telling ourselves we're runners now. Today one of us managed eight kilometres (with a fair bit of walking), and the other ran just over four with the F45 girls, including Paula — happy birthday, Paula — who's doing Hyrox Sydney next month on an injured ankle and dragged us along.

I still need a Hyrox partner. My original partner injured herself, the second one's pulled out — so if you're a woman watching who'd like to take part with me, come and train with us at Snap Fitness in Port Melbourne, and I'll buy you a cup of tea and biscuits afterward. We'll film some of the progress and put it on our socials. It's going to be the funniest thing we do all year.

[11:31] 400 subscribers

Before we bring in our guest — we've just reached 400 subscribers on YouTube. Thank you. We've only been going a couple of months and it's growing really well. Thank you to everyone who's subscribed, and to every guest who's come on board from all corners of the world and every modality. Listening to just the two of us would not be nearly as fun.

[12:09] Introducing Monique Elouise

Now it's time to welcome our guest — the lovely Monique Elouise. She comes to us from Melbourne, locates herself in different spaces around Australia, recently came back from a trip overseas, and she's from New Zealand too — a Kiwi, which we always love. Monique, wonderful to see you. Thank you so much for having me, and congratulations on the 400. Before we dive into Kundalini, Reiki and everything you do — what first drew you into the world of healing and spiritual development?

[13:30] A line of witches

It's a good story. When I was a little girl, around four, my nana passed away. Even though I didn't know her that well, she was very spiritual — a psychic medium who could see people who had passed. After she passed, she used to come into my room at night and tuck me in. I'd feel the blankets pulled across my chest, then an impression down by my lower legs, and I always just knew it was her. I was never scared. I believe part of the reason she passed when she did was to protect and guide me on this path. I had an aunt on the other side of the family who was very spiritual too. As a kid I thought, if I come from a line of witches, then I'm a witch — I wondered what my superpowers would be. So little me would be stoked that this is what I'm doing.

(Kebrasca: I used to think I was Superman and jump off the roof — never did learn to fly. Please don't do that again. We need you.)

[16:07] How trauma shaped the path

Do you think the challenges you experienced early on prepared you for this work? Absolutely. A lot of what I went through was childhood sexual trauma, and a lot of the people I work with, at some point, turn out to have had their own sexual trauma or had their physical boundaries pushed. That's why I've gone to such lengths to become trauma-informed — learning about the nervous system and regulation — because as a healer you always want to leave someone better than when they came in. Sometimes that means if they come in for one thing but it doesn't feel right in the moment, you change it. A lot of what I've healed through my own journey has shaped who I am, so on some level I'm grateful for the experience, because it really feels like the path.

[19:12] Burnout and survival mode

You've spoken openly about burnout, anxiety and feeling disconnected from yourself. Looking back, those first experiences of burnout — when I didn't even know what it was — pushed me into survival mode, and the decisions that came through were "I've just got to stop everything that's pushing me too much." Some of my best decisions came then — maybe not by society's book, but they realigned me. Now, when I notice I'm heading into burnout or my nervous system is dysregulated, I've got a toolbox. I can ask: are these decisions coming from fear? What brings me back into my heart, into a regulated state, so I'm choosing what's actually best for me — which is not running away or quitting, although that's fun.

Society conditions us to push to the limit and "suck it up," and we almost wear burnout like a badge of honour. It's not a good thing. The old 9-to-5 where you went home and switched off doesn't exist anymore — now it's 24/7, and even when you rest you feel guilty, so you stay hypervigilant, waiting for the next thing. Covid and the lockdowns taught us a lot about how we've evolved as a society.

[22:36] Why we can't regulate

Why do so many people live in survival mode? A lot of people don't recognise their trauma until much later, or they suppress it. Many are living in their heads, so disconnected from the body that they don't notice the symptoms — they'll be stressed at work with digestive issues and not join the dots; they'll go to the doctor and get something that suppresses the symptom but never reaches the root. There isn't a wide understanding of the mind-body balance, the psychosomatic side of healing. So they spiral, blinkers on, stuck on the same loop — and that's where bigger disease can take hold, when it might have been prevented if they'd wound right back to the first small signals.

[25:02] Regulation tools

How do you regulate your own nervous system? I've got a lot of tools. Most days at the end of the day I do basics — lying flat on the ground doing gentle pelvic tilts, reminding myself I'm safe in my body, working with the root chakra because it's grounding. And really connecting with the breath — even just a hand over your heart and your lower abdomen, feeling that you're a breathing body, takes you out of the mind and back into the body. Grounding, going for a walk, exercising regularly. It's got to be a balance — learning to listen to your body's signals instead of pushing until you're burnt out. Did you stop to ask why, though? What's the goal? If you don't have health, you can't enjoy the house or the money. I've met so many wealthy clients who are still unhappy, still empty, still don't know why they feel sad — and they get handed a drug that doesn't get them off the wheel. It's chasing a quick fix instead of realising it's a pathway. You have to put in the daily work — the body, but also the mind, the nervous system, the emotions. We're holistic creatures: mind, body, spirit.

How often do you see clients who hardly ever release, stop or breathe? Almost every client. With treatments like Reiki, people come in expecting "heal me," feel peace and calm, then go straight back into the same situation that caused it, and come back saying it didn't work. Have you done your homework? Oh, no. There's no quick fix. Every healer has put in the work — but if the client won't, they're hitting their head against a brick wall.

[30:56] What drew her to Kundalini

Kundalini activation is all over the internet right now. What drew you to it? I started with yoga about 18 years ago. The pathway just fell in front of me — I did teacher training, went to India multiple times, studied with gurus. In 2015, during a 200-hour hatha yoga training, I received shaktipat — a divine blessing of Kundalini awakening — from a guru who'd spent their whole life in that practice. At the time I had no idea what I was receiving or how much it would transform my life.

[31:22] Awakening vs activation

Kundalini awakening is different from Kundalini activation, and there's a lot of confusion about that. You can have many spiritual awakenings over a life, but a Kundalini awakening is the full awakening of the Kundalini shakti — the divine feminine — rising up the sushumna nadi to meet her divine partner, Shiva, so masculine and feminine are embodied in you. That's the fluffy, mythic version. Really, it's going through a sh*t show. When you have a full awakening you never see life the same way again — everything not meant for you burns to the ground, your nervous system goes out of whack, and it's like a dark night of the soul that goes on for years. Dark years of the soul. It was brutal, but I see the blessings now.

Two or three years ago I had my first Kundalini activation. Because of my traditional lineage I initially felt it wasn't right — it should be sacred, eastern. But the more I explored it, the more I saw how beneficial it was, especially for working with the remnants of trauma, and how it can evolve you spiritually if used the right way.

[34:44] What an activation feels like

For someone who's never experienced one — it brings up different things for different people (I have a lot of disclaimers on my site). It pinpoints the darkness ready to rise, so it's really shadow work. It helps to hold an intention beforehand. It works on the physical body and can create the movements you've seen on camera — that's often trauma moving through the body to complete a cycle that couldn't finish at the time. Think of Peter Levine's somatic work: animals in the wild shake off threat so they don't hold the trauma. If you froze in a frightening moment — too small to fight, run or yell — those experiences can surface, and the movements depict an action that needed completing. Your conscious mind switches off, so you might have no memory of it afterward. I had a woman in a group session who was lying there enjoying the energy, then suddenly shot her fists out, swore, thrashed her arms — and afterward said, "I have no idea what that was about." Some people feel blissful and calm; some have aha moments; sometimes grief that's been held comes up.

[38:05] Integration

What happens after? My sessions run about two hours — I won't take people out of the experience until they're ready; sometimes I extend the session so someone can finish their cycle, otherwise it's not safe and they can hold on to the energy. Then we do embodiment work, reconnecting to the body, here and now, breath to re-regulate the nervous system, and sharing circles — hearing others helps you understand your own experience. I send a follow-up email with integration processes and I'm available afterward. Integration is the longest part, not the ceremony — your human brain has to catch up to what happened. Keep working with the energy at least every couple of weeks, because it keeps moving through you for the next three to seven days. Don't chase the next high or spiritual-bypass your way to the next breathwork. Even in yoga, the correct practice ends in shavasana — that lying-flat integration where you ask how your body feels now versus before. People chase healing the same way we drive ourselves to burnout, stacking modalities thinking they'll heal faster. But healing is layer by layer, trauma by trauma, and it takes as long as it takes. The body keeps score, and you have to give it time to recover and release.

[45:52] Trauma-informed principles

What does trauma-informed mean? In the simplest terms, understanding where your clients are and making sure they feel safe — safe to share, and safe in what you're about to do. Being aware of your actions as a practitioner: asking if touch is okay, describing where and what pressure, making clear they can change their mind at any point and that they're always in control and leading. Watching for the "pack mentality" in group rooms where people push themselves to keep up. Noticing who needs support, and never doing anything to harm them. Some people don't feel comfortable sharing trauma, and you also don't want trauma-dumping — so it's checking in and doing the best you can. That's a responsible way to look at healing, because people come in vulnerable; some healers go straight in and make it worse.

[48:48] What the industry gets wrong

Is there anything the healing industry gets wrong? A big one is nervous system regulation. Coming from a spiritual background is great, but we need the science too. If we can recognise when someone is hyper-vigilant (fight-or-flight, holding tension, breathing rapidly) versus in freeze, we know what they're ready for. Someone hyper-vigilant probably shouldn't do an activating Kundalini session — Reiki would serve them better, to settle and feel safe first. It's about building nervous-system resilience so they can move in and out of states, rather than rapid ups and downs. It's another layer for us as healers, but it makes a real difference. And those psychic gifts that awaken as you go help too — you learn to read between the words, to feel when someone's energy doesn't match what they're saying, and suggest, "maybe today it's just a calm Reiki session."

[52:54] Ascension Reiki & power

You teach Ascension Reiki and encourage practitioners to move beyond rigid systems. Do people give too much power away to healers? Yes — people say "you're my healer," and I say no, it's a contract; we're doing it together. I provide the space, but you're doing the work, and your healing is much stronger when you do. Mikao Usui created the five Reiki principles for exactly this reason — people would come for healing then go back to their lives as though life was happening to them. "Just for today, I will let go of anger; I will let go of worry; I will be kind to all; I will do my work honestly..." Those are ways of life that put it back on the person and empower them to be their own healer. There's an initial phase where we all learn to heal ourselves first, and then realise we can help others — and stepping people toward taking responsibility for their own journey is vital. I'll still be here, but at some point they need to take ownership.

[56:12] Collaboration over competition

It's beautiful when you sense it's the last time you'll see someone — fly, little baby, go free and come back and tell me what you did. Sometimes they move on to a different healer, which is lovely. A big theme for me this last year has been collaboration over competition. The industry can get competitive — "my clients, your clients" — but that goes against the nature of healing. There's enough for everyone; the world needs healing, and we're not going anywhere. So I work collaboratively now and happily refer people on.

[57:20] Psychic work meets energy healing

How do psychic work and energy healing complement each other? As your channels open through Reiki and energy work, your psychic gifts tend to awaken. Instead of following a rigid taught structure, your intuition switches on. I'll often pre-channel for a client 10–20 minutes before they arrive — checking in with the cards or their energy — so I can prepare which modality the session might need. You two came the opposite way — psychic first, then energy healing. (Hosts: Yes — both of us were psychic, then mediumship, then energy, then Ashati, and Kebrasca went into physical work after that.) For me it's all blended now. I get a lot of physical sensations in my body in the lead-up — I'll feel a back or shoulder or neck and know that's what the person is carrying, and when it clears in me, I know it's cleared in them. At first those empath sensations feel like the worst curse — then you learn to turn them into a superpower.

(Amber: People usually come to me for a psychic reading, and during it I'll scan them and often see they need a healing — nine times out of ten with women it's carrying other people's stuff, not being grounded, and holding the breath far too much.)

[1:04:07] Renaming the business

You've made some big business decisions lately based on intuition. What felt risky but turned out to be the best decision? Renaming my business. I let go of my old domain — Anahata Reiki and Wellness — and just used my name. The old name was great when I started, but I'd matured and was offering different things; it didn't feel true anymore. My name will never change. It's also about owning that I'm a person, not a business — we can hide behind a business name rather than stepping into our own light, especially after being in the spiritual closet a long time. I'd had that domain five or six years with natural traffic and bookings, so it felt like the most stupid decision of my life — but when I leaned in, I had the biggest months in my business, and it let me expand and own more of myself.

(Hosts: Kebrasca went through the same — putting his own name on his healing work, no longer afraid of what clients would think about us speaking with the dead. It took a long time, but it's empowering to stand up and say: this is me, all of my past, all of it — take it or leave it.)

[1:06:34] The quiet voice

That firm calling is just a voice you hear and can't turn your back on. It made me walk away from a pending marriage at 23. If something's truly meant for you, it keeps showing up — a burning sensation — and ignoring it can even lead to burnout, because you're not listening to your intuition telling you you're out of alignment. People get the signs over and over until their guides are practically screaming. And people think intuition is a big booming voice — sometimes it is, but mostly it's quiet. If you don't take the time and space to be still, you'll miss it completely.

[1:13:19] Navigating uncertainty

Spiritual entrepreneurship can be lonely — there's no road map. How do you navigate big decisions? My husband — spiritual in his own way but very logical and grounded — gives me a different perspective. And meditation, contemplation, getting healing, sometimes tarot from others. I take in all the information, then sit with it in my heart: what decision really gets me where I want to be, and why? The goal beyond the goal. Even the chakra system reminds us — top three spiritual, bottom three material and grounded, the heart between — that we have to live in both worlds.

What's been harder, the healing or the business? The business, honestly. When you get into the spirituality you just want to sit in it all day and forget you have to market, build a website, ask clients to work with you, do the admin, the invoicing, the money flow. You might be the best healer in the world, but if no one can find you... and you might be the best marketer in the world, but if you can't tell your healing story... it's a blend of both, and you have to commit to learning both, the same way you committed to your modality.

[1:18:25] The one lesson

What's one lesson you wish you'd learned sooner? Don't wait until it's perfect to start. Start messy. You learn so much on the job — about business and about being a healer — through doing the work. If you keep chasing certifications but never share it, what's the point? Even if a new workshop gets one person, show up fully. The only failure is not going, or cancelling, or limiting yourself because it's "not perfect." Most of my clients know how bad my spelling is — I'm a little dyslexic — and I've accepted that part of myself. On the bigger scope: get out of your own way and be excited that you're doing it.

(Hosts: That's us in marketing — we'd never push anything out we didn't feel 100% on. But even this podcast isn't perfect; we'll keep growing it as we go. That's how things are really done.)

[1:22:21] Tarot reading for Monique's business

A general reading for the next three months around your business — three cards.

Month one — Seven of Cups: choices to be made on direction. You're good at many things, so there's more than one good option here. A little message that you'll be near the sea soon — exploring and meditating on what's coming. Hard work you're choosing into, growing things creatively. The next layer of your product sphere — new offerings, new workshops — with your students shaping what you build. Stepping out of the comfortable into something different.

Month two — riches and rejoicing: the money's coming in. After the planning, this is integrating it and reaping it. Driven by collaborations and your students, with you steering the ship. A win-win-win where everyone who comes on board shares their gifts, the load is shared, and the finances are the bonus on top of the healing.

Month three — the Lovers: a card of choices. You've planned, you've collaborated, and now you choose where next. A movement forward rather than settling — you already have all the tools. There may be a pull to stay comfortable, but the work pushes you deeper, helping people out of deeper trauma. We're seeing this run more like six months than three — events as a real component, bigger collaborations, laying a foundation for a 2027 pathway. Buckle up.

(Monique: Very accurate — that's pretty much how my next six months is shaping up. I'm getting the breadcrumbs already. It really does feel like it comes from the Kundalini — when you embody it, it moves you into alignment. For the first time, I know where I'm going.)

[1:35:17] Where to find Monique

Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your world. You can visit Monique on her website and socials — consultations, Kundalini activations and upcoming events. If you're stuck or unsure what you want to be doing this year, reach out; she'll set you on the right path. She makes really clear social videos explaining what she does, too.

And we'll steer ourselves into another episode next week — same time, same channel, Thursday 5pm AEST. Another very special, talented guest who's been through a lot. Every guest so far has been phenomenal; this podcast wouldn't be what it is without their value, knowledge and experience. Thank you to all our viewers and listeners — we really value your questions and comments. See you next week. Take care until then.

#creativetalk podcast — where consciousness meets commerce, with hosts Amber & Kebrasca King.

This article touches on childhood adversity and trauma. It's intended as general information about kundalini activations, not therapeutic advice. If any of it brings up something heavy for you, please reach out to a qualified professional or someone you trust.