Ep #66: Integrative Massage with Monique Derouen

Female Announcer: Welcome to More Than Mindset, the only podcast that bridges the gap between spirituality and success. Go beyond the mind with clarity and confidence coach, Kim Guillory, and learn how to integrate your passion to serve with your skills and experience to create a business you love. Let’s get started.

Kim Guillory: Hey, guys, and welcome back to the show. I have a special guest today, Monique Derouen from Glenwood Springs, CO. Monique and I have a little past together. It’s an interesting little history. We were in massage therapy school together, but we also have multiple certifications. We have that in common. We’re both cosmetologists. She’s an esthetician, we’re both certified in Thai Yoga and craniosacral and all of the things, Reiki masters, and we have a lot in common.

So, I brought Monique on today to talk about integrative massage therapy because that’s basically what it has evolved into, correct? Is that correct?

Monique Derouen: Yes, integrative massage therapy is what I go by.

Kim Guillory: So, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Monique Derouen: So, I am just trying to live my dreams out here, Kim. I came to this beautiful town full of holistic, nice, healing modalities in the area as a massage therapist. As I started practicing here in the valley, I started noticing that there was something else that I needed to be doing. Maybe I needed one more certification, maybe I needed one more thing to add on to my list because I wasn’t getting the results I wanted to get with my clients, once again after 20-something years of touching people something was still missing.

Kim Guillory: What did that look like?

Monique Derouen: It looks like my clients coming in on my table and asking for specific work and we would spend 60 minutes, 90 minutes, some people even two-hour massages that I would work on and they would go home and they would feel great for two or three days and then all of a sudden they’d call me and the restless leg was back or the hip was messing again or the pain traveled somewhere else. All of a sudden it wasn’t the shoulder anymore now it was the neck.

Again, I just kept seeing that and I kept thinking, “There’s got to be more. There’s got to be something else I can do here. These people are coming to me for help and I’m giving them that, but it’s not long-lasting. We’re not getting to the root. We’re not getting to what’s actually going on in the body. We’re only slapping some Band-Aids on it.” That wasn’t feeling right for me. I want my clients to be able to have long-term pain relief and be able to manage these things and it just kept coming back, kept coming back.

Kim Guillory: So, I’m going to back up a moment and then we’ll go forward again, but I remember when I met you and I’m saying we’re both cosmetologists and we’re both yoga lovers and body stuff and you went from cosmetology to massage therapy and I recall it was because you kept seeing cosmetology clients in pain. Was that right? Let me let you tell you the story of what sent you to massage therapy school.

Monique Derouen: Okay, so yes, that’s true. I was a cosmetologist for right at 20 years I guess whenever I finally went to massage school and I was licensed to touch everything on the body except for the torso. So, again, my clients would sit in my hair chair and they’d tell me these stories about they had the herniated disc, and they had the neck surgeries and they still had the pain. Or they had the foot surgery and they still had the pain and all the things.

I was doing a pedicure one day and one of my clients says, “Have you ever thought about being a massage therapist?” I said, “Oh yeah, I’ve thought about it many times.” I just had to go school, I had to make time, you know, I had to do all the things. I had to make the right spot in my life and in that moment, I said, “You know what? I’m going to go to massage school.” So, I did because I really thought that, again, I could help my clients because if I could this work on their scalp and their hands and their feet and their legs and make them feel this good, what happens when I actually touch their spine?

So, I went to massage school. It was a great experience. I learned a lot of things that I never want to do as well as what’s really great for me to do in the massage world itself. So, just touching the people in general and hearing the same stories, hearing the same pain, but I started noticing things as well like my clients would tell me the same story when I touched a certain part of their body. They had a story that they were telling in their body itself. I got really interested and wanted to read those stories in their body, if that makes sense. That’s kind of what was intriguing me.

Kim Guillory: Yeah, I would say we both fell more under body work than – I mean, it surely wasn’t Swedish massage that brought us in and I just did Thai yoga and cranial, my people stayed fully dressed. I did very few Swedish massages unless I was doing some sort of healing modality with it. Whether it was essential oils or something else, but kind of the same thing.

Monique Derouen: So, yeah, that point in time I was licensed in aesthetics, cosmetology, barbering among all the extra stuff that we had already gotten and done. I had a nail tech certificate, basically all of these different things and so I thought, “Why not? Why not be a massage therapist, too? What do I have to lose?”

So, I went on to school. I definitely love the education that I got. I had a lot of great information as far as anatomy and physiology and the body systems and I really understood the way the nervous system worked and all of our organs. That was very intriguing to me and it pushed me to really study in those spaces so I could get really familiar with the anatomy of the body so that I could do the best I could to help my clients because that’s my thing. I’m a helper, I’m a healer, that’s what I do.

I learned as much as I could and I took in all that information and when I got out of school, I was just ready to go. I knew all the things and I was going to be a great massage therapist, then I became a massage therapist and then I learned about what the things they told us all in massage school would happen. About how our bodies would break down and we could only do so many a day and blah, blah, blah, all the massage stuff.

Kim Guillory: Yeah, it was definitely interesting. I remember talking to several massage therapists before even going because I was already doing Thai yoga and body work and stuff before, kind of like with you as a cosmetologist also, and nails and feet. We were kind of already doing a lot of reflexology and stuff.

But I think the thing that stuck with me that you’re kind of going for right now is where we were told, “Your body is going to break down. You need to stand in a certain position. You need to not use this kind of pressure. You want to use tools to help you. It would take around four years to build your practice and then you will be burnt out in seven.” Is that what you’re referring to, those kinds of things?

Monique Derouen: Yeah, and it was like, “Okay, so I’ve got three good years of money making. Get my hands ready.” I had in my mind like I’m going to blow out my wrist. I had been told when I was younger I would have issues with arthritis in my hands and stuff like that and I just kept thinking about all those things could possibly happen and how much time did I actually have to make the money, to help the people, and do a good job before I was done?

Kim Guillory: Even looking at in the massage therapy industry and the marketing that’s used, it’s all that same story. You should do this so that you save your body and save your hands so you don’t have to work so hard. It’s for sure insinuated and we are basically hypnotized by what we hear over and over and over and over.

So, let’s get to the part about then I became a massage therapist and let’s talk about reality of the massage therapy industry and finances, just all of that stuff. What have you tried? I remember some of the stories. I was like, “Oh heck no, we’re not going there.”

Monique Derouen: The first thing I did was, of course, I went to work in the spa that I was already employed in with all of my other licenses and it was a great spa. It was a multi-million-dollar spa. It’s a beautiful space and I was super grateful to work there. They paid me really nicely and I had all the fluffy benefits; the nice table that went up and down automatically, the clients built in, all that good stuff.

So, that was okay, but I was still under a corporate listing and so I still had to follow the rules and play the game with them and that’s not really my thing. I’m not that kind of girl. So, then I decided I would start doing massage at home and I rationalized in my mind that $35 an hour for a massage was a perfect amount because I already was paying for my utilities and I wasn’t renting a building, and I had rationalized all these reasons.

All I’m buying is a cup of cream, an ounce of cream on each person and I’m washing laundry already at my house and so $35 sounds great. I even went as far to say for people that referred me five $35 clients they would get a free massage. I mean, I was doing all the gimmicks, I was doing all the things. I was handing out cards with percentages off and people wouldn’t even get on my table for 35 freaking dollars an hour, can you imagine? I would be like a six-hour massage client for $35, like get after it.

 

Kim Guillory: Because the mind says, I’m only making that anyway.

Monique Derouen: Yeah, that’s what my commission was so what’s the difference? $35 an hour people still didn’t want to pay. The people that did pay it, raved about the massage I give. They were so excited to get this. They would say, “This is the best thing I’ve ever done. You have the perfect pressure. You got all the right spots. You found things that I didn’t even know I had.”

I’m like, “Great. Let’s sign you back up again. Hey, if you keep coming, I’ll keep charging you $35 an hour.” So, if you come once a month, $35, you’re my new client. Still didn’t work. Then I thought, “Oh my gosh, maybe I’m too cheap. Maybe I look like a Walmart massage therapist,” you know?

I had that kind of judgment of myself. Then I started thinking and spinning off of that. So, anyways, after I got called out by a couple of my massage therapy friends I quit offering the $35 an hour massages because they fussed me and said that the quality of my massage was too good to do that and I shouldn’t do that. So, I sunk back down in that space and decided that I would go up on my prices a little bit.

Kim Guillory: But your mentality was, “I’ll get more clients,” right? What was your mentality? What was the thought behind it?

Monique Derouen: Well, I thought if I make it affordable then I can get people to come in once a month and we can actually start working on their issues. If they come in once a month or once every two weeks, then we can build a series program where they’re coming in on a regular basis and I’m able to help them aid in their healing long-term. They’re not just coming in once in a while because they have a backache. They’re coming in for transformation for their body. I thought this was the way to give it to them. I was certain this was the way.

Kim Guillory: But are they coming in for transformation?

Monique Derouen: No, not at all. They have no idea what’s really going on with their bodies. That’s what was crazy. They didn’t. They were just coming in for a relaxation. They had no idea that their shoulder was legit stuck or why it was stuck. They just knew that they had maybe done something or picked something up funny and it didn’t feel right.

Kim Guillory: We still have a long way to go to educate society on the benefits of massage. Even in pandemic we’ve seen this, it’s not essential and of course for us we believe it is very essential to be in connection and to have the support and the guidance of a mind-body worker with us.

So, you’ve tried the gimmicks, you tried all of the things and then you were moving and what was your vision?

Monique Derouen: So, we were moving to Colorado and my vision was to come to this super cool holistic space with these natural hot springs and beautiful environment and I’m just going to be a rock star massage therapist. I mean, I’m going to go there and I’m going to kick some tail. Country comes to town kind of idea. That’s where I was at in my mind and I thought, “It’s such a great space and massage therapy has got to be a really popular thing.”

I have all these extra things. I have Thai yoga, I have aroma touch, I have all these cool certifications that other people don’t have, so surely, again, I’m going to be the number one. They’re going to be looking for me because I know all the things. I can do all the extra stuff. I have all of those certifications and that was a lie, too.

Kim Guillory: It’s so much better somewhere else, so we naturally think people in Louisiana don’t know and they don’t understand massage and they’re so behind on time and they don’t respect what we do. That’s what the mind literally tells us, right? So, I’m going to go over there where it’s so much better, where people are enlightened or awakened or aware and?

Monique Derouen: And I got here and I did the same thing I did in Louisiana here. I started out again with $25 half-hour massages and $45 an hour and if you re-book every month I’m going to keep you at that price. I did all that stuff again, not even realizing that I was actually doing the same thing again and it didn’t work there. Guess what, Kim, it didn’t work here either. It didn’t work here.

Kim Guillory: It’s really crazy. I remember when you were telling me, I was like, “No, what? Wait, wait, wait.” Because it’s so not what we think it is. These neuropathways run really, really deep. It’s everything from childhood, it’s everything from what our parents taught us about money and people not paying. It’s all of the gimmicks that the marketing world tells us to do and try, and what do you call it whenever they buy those discounted things through email, Groupon and oh my God.

Monique Derouen: That’s just not the kind of work that I want to do. I mean, I put a lot of energy and effort into my schooling. I put a lot of energy and effort into the work that I do and I didn’t see the value that I could offer people. I didn’t know that I was valuable. No one had ever told me. I didn’t believe it, I guess. I don’t know.

Kim Guillory: Yeah, it’s not being able to see ourself for thing. We don’t realize we’ve spent a lot of years learning about the body and when you don’t have the confidence and your thought is, “Oh, I need to be cheaper for them to come” because you believe the money is the problem. Same here. I did this for years.

I remember thinking at one time if I could charge the cheapest and get the most people because I loved it so much and I wanted to help so many people that it was going to be nice. It’s like we could just laugh at ourself now because we could help no one.

Monique Derouen: Absolutely, totally laugh about it now.

Kim Guillory: What about the client that believes they have to have deep tissue in order for it to work? How often do you hear that?

Monique Derouen: Man, this is such a common misunderstanding with massage clients. They believe that the deeper you go the better the massage is and I believe the exact opposite. I believe that we don’t have to go deep at all. We can barely touch you and still make the impact because the work that I do is based more off of the nervous system and what the body does naturally.

So, if the nervous system is balanced then the body does what it’s supposed to do and it gives you permission to release these spaces without that physical attack of the deep tissue work and here’s the thing, Kim. If I dig into somebody and they’re resistant we’re not getting anywhere except for me having a jammed-up thumb by the day over. It doesn’t go anywhere.

I have clients that just believe, again, the deeper you go the better that massage is and I beg to differ.

Kim Guillory: It’s almost a mindset of getting their money’s worth, I found. Because I hear what people are saying, like we go to the spa and we’re in groups of people and it was like, “How was yours? How was yours? How was yours?” Oh man, it was good. She got really hard, got in there.

So, there is a part about it like it’s almost like exercise, it needs to hurt to know we did something. It’s really a mentality and then you have the money mentality on top of that. It was worth it because it was so intense. I’m with you. If you can get me to trust and to relax and to go down, my body will melt like butter and heal itself.

It’s being able to unlock access to the parasympathetic nervous system and it’s super simple, super easy and you were saying like we can do it by barely touching. We can do it by not touching at all.

Monique Derouen: Yeah, even that, and that is the most mind-blowing of all.

Kim Guillory: So, how did you tackle or how did you handle that piece of educating the client? Because we have to change the mindset. We have to bring in the awareness.

Monique Derouen: The first thing I started doing was with my regular massage clients, even the ones that desired the deep tissue and asked for it, I would explain the nervous system and how that works for them and most of them were up to it. Every once in a while, one of them still wanted me to dig into them and some of those just may not be my clients long-term. We may not mesh well together because that’s not the work that I desire to do.

But what happened is when I would get to the end I would start doing a little cranial work maybe under the scalp or on the face and I would just kind of show them how just that simple, light touch and some lymphatic work sometimes or a little light myofascial release could be so beneficial to the body.

Once those clients were turned on to that and they understood that they trusted me to take them into a different space deeper. What was even cooler than that is that with COVID right now out and about I cannot put clients on my physical table. It’s against the law and so I don’t have that option, but what I do have the option to do is the work that I currently am doing right now and I don’t even have to put them on the table. I can meet with them through Zoom on the computer. I can meet with them on the telephone and because I know how to help them control the nervous system, we can get them into that relaxed state with just a simple conversation and a little bit of emotional processing work sometimes even which has been really, really cool.

Kim Guillory: Another part about, we spoke about this earlier, is the deep tissue part and what so many have turned off and why the deep tissue is important and I’ll let you talk a little bit on that because I recognize the same thing on the massage table.

Monique Derouen: Yeah, I think that deep tissue comes into play when people can’t feel. When their feelings have actually been shut off and they need to feel something to know that they’re even around or existing or alive and it’s got to be something more than the pain that they’re feeling in their body. What they’re not understanding is that connection from where this pain is actually starting from. Because that is what I understand and what I know I can take them into that pain relief space in such an easy manner.

Kim Guillory: It’s kind of like not understanding why someone cuts themselves or pulls their eyelashes, has these little habits. It’s like either the emotional pain is so intense you have to find painful that’s more than that or like you want to get in your body. Guys, we want to be in our body.

I’ll just talk a little bit about this and just allow you to tell your story because whenever you and I did connect – once you moved to Colorado and you saw what I was doing, you were like, “Uh-uh, girl, what’s up? Uh-uh, I need to know about this,” right? Then, you actually became a client and then stepped into the training because it is such an amazing process. You were like, “I want this, too. I want to help people.”

It is new, so it’s not something that you’re going to find at a conference. It’s something that was created through the actual work, this process. Could you just share a little bit of your experience once we started working together? Because it was you experiencing it in your own life first for you to be able to help someone else?

Monique Derouen: Yeah, so as we started doing the work and I really understood that I, myself, have never learned to process emotions or trauma or things that were stored in the body and through doing this work I was able to pull those things up and look at them and see that that was still holding on there and I was carrying that in my physical body.

So, as we went through these spaces and unlocked that, those things opened up and that space released and I had freedom and I had movement and I had flexibility in those areas. So, I knew that if I were able to do that on my own with the help of you then I could also offer that to my clients and how could that benefit that in their daily life with what they have going on compared to digging my elbow in their back? Which is a better option?

So, as we started working with clients, they started seeing the results as well and so I knew this was legit. I knew it was real. It wasn’t just something that I had processed and been through and been able to release but now I’m able to do that with my clients and they’re getting those results as well. It’s a really phenomenal experience to go through. It’s a really interesting space to be in to be able to let that pain go. It looked like mass confusion before and now it’s just very clear. Everything’s really clear and very airy and light and just not heavy.

Kim Guillory: Once you experienced that integration, that’s what we’ll call it because it’s an integrative process, once you experience that integration of the mind and body in this seamless, holistic approach, how would describe or explain that in your own words?

Monique Derouen: So, first as we started integrating these things it was very new. It was something I had never experienced or felt before. It was nothing I was ever taught about. So, at first, it’s kind of that scary, these things come up and they’re here and now I’m facing them. But that was only for a short second. It was so minimal and then all of a sudden everything was different.

I could move differently. I could see differently. There were things that I – I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t heavy, I wasn’t holding things that weren’t mine anymore and so I really started understanding unconditional love, not judging things or people. I understood what impact this had in my body. What was holding me down was a lot of emotional turmoil and it was very real and it was very painful. I don’t feel that anymore. I don’t have the shoulder that’s stuck, the hip moves great, the ankle is super flexible now.

There were physical things in my body that were not functioning and after I’d gone through this those things aren’t there anymore. They don’t cause the restrictions that I had before. I’m not afraid to try things or do the sports that I was scared to do in the past or climb the mountain or ride the bike or do the things that have held me back.

Because I was programmed to believe that my body would break down and that by a certain age, I would have all these issues because of our family histories and none of that is true. I don’t have any of those problems that the doctors told me. I function great. I’m healthier than I’ve ever been and I feel phenomenal and excited to wake up and take on the day. I don’t dread being – the mental stability is so clear. I’m so clear with what I want in life and I just do it. I don’t worry about things. I’m not scared.

Kim Guillory: I’d like to touch a little bit on – because I was very much like you in this department, too, prior. It was like if I wasn’t getting a massage or doing acupuncture or acupressure or at the chiropractor it was like I was constantly at someone sticking probing, doing, and I remember you with the TMJ and the thing with your hand. You were always digging and trying to move muscle and tissue and trying to get in there and open. How is your experience now not doing that?

We’re always probing and picking and trying to release or heal something. It’s hard to explain to someone who has not experienced it though, right? It was like me trying to explain it to you before you experienced it. It’s mental and emotional. There’s a switch, there’s access, and once we have access the emotional processing technique, hands down, to me is what shifts permanently shifts and rewrites the mental story and that emotional patterning.

Monique Derouen: Yeah, absolutely. Without that I would still be in possibly debilitating pain on a daily basis and I knew that I did not want to stay in pain. I had tried so many things and I didn’t have any other options. There was nothing else to do besides stay on pain meds and have surgery. That was just not where I was going.

I just made 40 years old and I’ve had tons of surgeries already and I just was not prepared to do any more. I’m done with doctors. I have no interest in them.

Kim Guillory: And alcohol consumption, right? It was everything. We can’t forget about the alcohol.

Monique Derouen: I was a master [inaudible 0:28:31] with wine.

Kim Guillory: Hey, alcohol sales are up 30% since this pandemic, so it’s like you know that’s the go-to. It was just a constant – same thing with me. Fifteen surgeries, 24 years of medication, 7, 8 prescriptions at a time, constantly on. Not being able to sleep, not being able to trust myself and make decisions because I couldn’t fall into my own emotions. Drinking on a regular basis, it was crazy. I don’t know if you had the same experience, but once the emotional processing, once all of that integrated and embodied the desire left.

It was the weirdest thing. It wasn’t like I’m going to try to quit or I ever even thought it was wrong. I thought people who didn’t drink were stupid. I was like, “You’re no fun. Why would you not drink? That’s ridiculous. I can’t imagine not drinking.”

Monique Derouen: Yeah, that was very interesting for me because growing up in southwest Louisiana when we’re babies we’re given a Miller Lite, I mean that’s what we do. So, I grew up watching people drink for everything. For a funeral, for a wedding, for a birthday party, for your kid’s birthday party, I mean, we broke out mimosas for kid’s birthday parties so that the moms would have something to hang out and do. This is how we were raised and there’s nothing wrong with that. That was what we were taught, but what I started doing was I started taking it on and doing it to buffer.

So, I would leave work, I hated my job, I went straight to happy hour, numb the pain. Go home, cook dinner, take out a bottle of wine, and I drank the whole bottle so that I could go to sleep at night because I didn’t want to take the Ambien because I drove a car one time on Ambien and I thought that wasn’t a good idea. You see what I’m saying?

I replaced one thing with another and even when I moved to Colorado, again, coming to this great, holistic area I was still drinking very heavily when we moved here and I just realized all of a sudden it just didn’t feel good. It wasn’t doing anything for me and I started doing this work and I started processing all these things. Where I would normally go grab a bottle of wine and a bag of potato chips and go to bed and cry all night, instead I journaled, and I dumped. Instead, I came to present and I started working on what was going on in my head. I started putting the pieces together. It was like that became the replacement for the stuff that I did because I didn’t need it anymore. Because I could handle it on my own and my brain wasn’t actually going to explode from thinking about what was going on in my life.

I ran away from all the problems and they didn’t go very far. They were all in my head. So, the drinking I was still doing even when we left Louisiana because the problems were still there. Anybody who knows me knows I was quick to make a cocktail, that was my jam. But I have no want for it at all. It doesn’t sound good to me and I’m with you, people that didn’t drink were crazy. Like, who doesn’t drink alcohol, right? Let’s have a good time, but now I know that there was a lot of underlying stuff. It was hidden beneath all that hardness and that sadness. The alcohol just helped me buffer and get through the moment to where I didn’t feel like I was going to die.

Kim Guillory: I don’t know that there was ever a time not to drink. It’s just a thing you did. We don’t have judgment about it now and I still don’t, it’s just a thing you do. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I would get off work, I’d get a 12-pack, I’d go sit on the patio, I’d get a pack of cigarettes and just let it all go.

I remember when I had become a health coach and we were doing – we had a peer group and they were saying how someone was an alcoholic because they drank one or two glasses of wine a night and this stuff. I remember thinking, “Hold on, you’re going to take their best friend away. Are you going to go be their best friend? Like, what’s going to happen here?”

Because they had judged it as wrong or considered it being an alcoholic. If you drink every day you must be and that’s really when I started noticing it. I have some really funny drinking stories. I’ve done a lot of stuff in my life. I won’t talk about it here just in case. If ever you guys come to a retreat or live event you get all the good stuff, and I just didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. So, it surprised me when I didn’t finish the bottle. It surprised me when I didn’t go to the store to get it afterward.

I was like, “What is happening here?” I didn’t recognize myself. I didn’t know who I was without the altered state of being. But like you’re saying, there was so much emotional stuff bubbling inside trying to explode and we were just trying to keep it settled, keep it down, turn it off, keep it away, right? It was so scary to be with ourself because I did the same thing as you. I ran away and everywhere I’d go that bitch would follow. She went everywhere I went.

Monique Derouen: I know. I went like 24 hours away from Louisiana and it came right with me. Like she just got in a backpack and rode on my back. “Come on, let’s go.”

Kim Guillory: Monique and I have a history. We have a lot in common. We have an infinite love for mind, body connection for soul essence, for really coming to our authenticity of who we are without the stories because those stories are so strong. The generational patterns, societal conditioning and especially in the South. Like, we have our own culture. We have our own way of being out here and it’s a beautiful way.

We are the best when it comes to connection and community. Someone’s house burns I mean, all of the neighbors are there. We are going to cloth your kids, we’re going to feed you, we’re going to give you money, we’re going to give you a place to sleep. We do all of the things. Like, it is the best when it comes to that.

The one thing we lack, there’s probably two, but for sure the one thing we lack is the health. We just don’t have an understanding. So, you can see why it took us so long to figure it out and why our journey is the way it is and how we kept going from training to training to training to training to heal ourself.

So, how would you say you experienced mind, body, or healing, or massage therapy in general? How would you perceive it now compared to before you came through the program? Before you came into the coaching and the work and the integration process? What’s your perception of it then compared to now?

Monique Derouen: So, my perception difference is that I can be a massage therapist until I am old and gray, for the rest of my life because I’m not going to hurt myself. Because I have a different technique. I’m not going to blow my wrist out. I don’t have to stand long hours, I don’t have to charge minimally, I know my value and I know that I can work with people and actually get them results. They can actually heal their own bodies. We can actually move forward and they don’t have to continue in this path and be in chronic pain for the rest of their lives, and take medicine, and have the surgeries, and do all the things that are being recommended because there’s another option. I didn’t know that was an option before.

I really thought I was probably going to work for about 10 years and that would be it. I figured by the time I’m 45 or 50, that’s a wrap, I’m done. But I have total confidence that I can do this work for another 30 years easy, maybe longer.

Kim Guillory: It is so satisfying and fulfilling knowing that I can help clients help themselves and share the tools. Like, teach them the steps of what to do at home to help themselves. Of course, it takes, gosh, a good seven years to retrain the brain so it’s not – it takes repetition, so you have to hear it again and again and again. We have to continue that process. It’s a practice, that coming into presence and unveiling and navigating and then going back, and going back.

But I’m with you on that. I love working. I love the results my clients get. I love watching you guys transform. I mean, it is – watching the way y’all are evolving and the way this work is evolving in your own approach. It’s integrated for you specifically to use your way. I think that is the best feeling for me is the empowerment is coming from not do exactly like I do but do you. Here are the tools, here’s the framework, here’s the process. I’m going to show you how to use it and then you’re going to take your skill set, your experience, your passion to serve and to make it your own.

Monique Derouen: Take in the information, take in the process, and plugging it to what I already know and what I already do and being able to evolve into this whole different realm of being able to heal people. It’s going to be amazing and what we’ve done so far with clients has been just life-changing for them. There are no words for what this work can do for somebody.

Kim Guillory: That was my next question, what are your clients saying? Because they’re all being introduced to it brand new, they have not heard of this before, right? What’s the feedback that you’re receiving from your clients?

Monique Derouen: I have gotten really, really great feedback from my clients from people saying my headaches are completely gone. Someone that dealt with chronic migraines, I’ve had clients that have had restless leg syndrome for years, four and five attacks a week that are down to zero attacks. It’s really interesting.

I have clients that have diseases like Raynaud’s, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis that have had minimal, if not zero flare ups since they’ve started doing this work. It’s just so interesting to watch that switch flip when we’re getting to the actual root causes of the pain and not, again, just putting a Band-Aid on it or given a pill or, “Here’s your shot of antibiotics. Get better. Come back and see us next month when you feel bad again.”

We are working with people one-on-one for multiple weeks in a row and they are getting transformation and healing that they would have never been able to experience doing anything else. It is absolutely amazing. I am mind-blown at their progress as well. So, I understand you when you say you feel like the mom that’s so proud. I just love that they trust me to take them into these spaces and that they’re open to getting this healing and that they believe they’re worth it. So, that’s been so awesome.

Kim Guillory: It’s like taking the leg braces off and being able to stand. It’s like that feeling of watching someone get out of a wheelchair. It’s rewriting the nervous system in such a gentle way. I want to cry. I really want to cry at the progress, the process, the ease and like how powerful those neuropathways were. Like, how the possibility of rewriting them and exactly what you just said right there, it’s addictive.

Monique Derouen: It is very addictive and once you find healing in one little space, it’s like, “Oh, what else can we do? Where else can we go?” Even now, Kim, I mean, I’ve been doing this for quite some time on myself personally besides reaching out to you guys and the team that we work with to help support me and help in my own healing, but every once in a while stuff still comes up for me and it’s so easy.

It’s so smooth. I can reach out in what do we do? An hour, and hour and a half I can be back to totally calm, all the pain’s gone and as I’m pulling these things up something else loosens, and something else loosens, and then there’s a little more space and there’s a little more room.

So, just creating this space in the body so that it does what it’s supposed to do in a natural, balanced, stable state is how we get this healing. Such a cool thing to experience and to be able to do it over and over and over again any time something comes up.  Any time I hurt myself, even if it’s a traumatic thing like I hit my elbow or I fall down. I can still not have pain because of the way we are taught to do this work.

Kim Guillory: This is the part where I can just kind of hang out right here and in such appreciation just weep, the discovery of this. I didn’t even realize what it was. When I was in it, I didn’t know that my nervous system was on fire. I didn’t know that my primal brain was on fire. I didn’t understand the way my mind worked. I didn’t understand access and lack of access where we had been locked up. I really didn’t.

I was so frustrated. I spend so much time trying to heal. Everything you could possibly imagine I ran the test on. I say, like, a spit in a cup and shit on a stick, I did all of that stuff. I took all of the supplements and the vitamins and they ran my hair through scanners and I mean all of it, all of it, all of it. There was just so much.

So, what makes me super excited is to have you so many of you trained now that I feel like it’s in us. How many people we can reach and where we can go with this as they come in. Even, in the More Than Mindset group where we’re starting to educate just the lay person on how they could start to experience it.

You could work this a good year or two years yourself before you actually need someone else to assist you and help you. It takes time for the brain to be able to open up and receive possibility. Like, listen, what if it were possible? What if you could health? What is you did believe? What if we could rewrite it? What if we could retrain your brain?

We’re at 50 minutes here, but I do want to talk a moment about TMS because I think it’s so important and that’s the mind body syndrome. How it hopes and skips and jumps and travels because I want to talk to those clients, those patients, who I was the one. My granddaughter came out of the room and she had a brace on every part of her body with my crutches and even a neck brace and a knee brace, my carpel tunnel braces, and that’s when I woke up and realized. “Oh my God, it’s all over my body.” I was also chain gain.

Monique Derouen: When I was packing up my house, had a vey similar story of all the crutches and the ankle boots and all of the braces that were all over the place and I put them in an little pile and I think I actually have them in the storage shed and I think I would burn them whenever I go to that house and empty it out because I’m never using that stuff again, I don’t need it. It’s such an interesting connection and once you make the connection the possibilities are endless.

This was not anything that we were ever taught. We were never taught about the mind, body syndrome or that that was a real thing, but once you actually experience it it unlocks a whole different level for not only the person, the practitioner, for me, as well to lead them there.

Kim Guillory: The pain was one thing, but when it really started with all of these rashes and it was all around my mouth and started on my skin. It looked like little, round things on my skin. It looked like little round things on my skin, it almost looked like a ringworm, but it wasn’t. But it was just like coming out of my body. You had that experience, too.

It was whenever you first started and we really getting into this, it sheds underneath the skin. It’s so annoying because it’s the hardest thing to try to manage, but we can even manage skin rashes.

Monique Derouen: It was annoying because I was actually annoyed though. That was the thing, right? Like, I was so mad my skin freaked out, it exploded out of my skin.

Kim Guillory: Rage.

Monique Derouen: So much anger, so much irritation and I started working with people with chronic sinus issues and I started working with people that had tonsillitis and I started going back to all of my old stories and I could really make these connections. I could really see exactly when the pain started in my body, what was going on in my life at that time, and when I had to have the emergency surgery just all of a sudden my uterus was gone and I had to have the surgery in that moment. My ovaries are exploding, my gallbladder is exploding, why? I was healthy, I was young, there was nothing wrong. Right?

To the outside world nothing was wrong. Why did all those things happen? It was because of what was going on inside of my mental and emotional body, like what was going on there and these things were manifesting in my body and causing illness and disease and pain and trauma, just tragic, crazy trauma going on all over my body and all this pain was there and now I know it was all TMS and I kind of feel silly about it after that. So, then I had to get into that guilt and shame and all that stuff as well. It brought up a whole different topic.

Kim Guillory: Yeah, well, what we can’t express, the emotions that can’t be expressed they are repressed and suppressed. They will materialize.

Monique Derouen: Yeah, we were just never taught. We were never taught to do that.

Kim Guillory: I don’t regret it. You know what, Monique, I don’t regret, but I remember being in it and I remember being frustrated and spending a fortune and running all these tests. I was just constantly somewhere trying to run – I felt like a hypochondriac. I remember I would drink green juice for like 14 days straight, I wouldn’t eat, I was trying to get rid of the rash because it was gluten and dairy. I bought into all of that. I bought into all of that hype and I was having none of it and it was not getting better.

I was so frustrated. The anger, the rage, and so of course, it’s materializing underneath my skin and in sinus and allergies and our vision and hearing. Anyway, unbelievable, so I have to say I don’t regret it. I don’t think you do either. I would do it again to experience the joy and bliss that I have now that I never even imagined it was possible and to be able to feel my body in such a calm state and to be able to sit in anything even in this epidemic. Even in death and all of these tragic things that happened and be able to experience the emotion, experience the sensation and not lose my mind over. Just be in the experience and still be calm inside.

Monique Derouen: Yeah, that’s huge. I suffered with anxiety and depression for years and to be able to not get into that space and be in that pain and if I do slip down there because I’m human and sometimes those things come around, I have the tools to come out of it and I do it with ease and grace. It’s so effortless and so seamless because of what I know now compared to what I knew then, I would have never made it through these kinds of things years ago and now it’s just like breathing, it’s just easy for me. It just makes it simple. Most of the time.

Kim Guillory: Imagine living your life’s legacy as an integrated being in your natural essence in ease and flow. It’s basically the promise of the five-step approach, the manual to gaining power and control of your life. It’s really true. What if it could be true?

Monique Derouen: Hey, it is true. I’m living it. It’s pretty awesome.

Kim Guillory: Thank you very much for coming on. So, we will put your information in the show notes on how they can get in touch with you, where they can find you. You do work in person and online, but you’ll be back in person whenever the doors open which is very soon in your state. I very much appreciate you coming on, sharing your story. We’ll have you on again and we can speak about different topics if the audience wants that they can come into the More Than Mindset group, find you there as well.

In the More Than Mindset group is where we support this process. So, it’s a great place to come make yourself a little soft nest and you can just be the watcher, be the observer, and then you can become the experiencer. It’s where we take this work a little bit deeper. It’s absolutely free and you’re welcome. You’re welcome to join, ask questions, see if we can support you.

All right, until next week. Bye, Monique.

Monique Derouen: Bye, Kim.

Female Announcer: Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset.