Dark Years of the Soul: Monique Elouise on Kundalini, Trauma and Learning to Hear the Quiet Voice
From a Line of Witches: Where the Gift BeganMonique 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 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.In This Episode00:0002:39 — Welcome to #creativetalk11:31 — 400 YouTube subscribers — thank you12:09 — Introducing Monique Eloise13:30 — From a line of witches: Monique's nana and her origin story16:07 — How childhood trauma shaped her path19:12 — Burnout, anxiety and living in survival mode22:36 — Why we can't regulate: disconnection from the body25:02 — Monique's nervous-system regulation tools30:56 — Kundalini activation: what drew her in31:22 — Kundalini awakening vs activation, explained34:44 — What a Kundalini activation actually feels like38:05 — Integration: the longest part of the journey45:52 — Trauma-informed principles in healing48:48 — What the healing industry gets wrong (the nervous system)52:54 — Ascension Reiki & not giving your power away56:12 — Collaboration over competition57:20 — The crossover between psychic work and energy healing1:04:07 — Renaming her business & coming out of the "spiritual closet"1:06:34 — Trusting the quiet voice of intuition1:13:19 — Navigating uncertainty as a spiritual entrepreneur1:18:25 — The one lesson: don't wait until it's perfect1:22:21 — LIVE tarot reading for Monique's business1:35:17 — Where to find Monique
