Elina Auriel was born on 21st May 1992 in Greece. She is a singer, songwriter, voice specialist and energy healer. Elina studied piano, classical singing, learned European and byzantine music theory, flute and saz. She owns a studio in Germany where she currently lives, and is an accomplished and multifaceted artist with a 4 octave range. She has released the records “Alchemy” (2019), “Once upon a Christmas dream” (2021), “Revival” (2022) and the EP “Brand new eyes” (2024).
From rhythm gymnastics, to playing Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera” and Mary Magdalene in “Jesus Christ Superstar” to two metal bands to a more ethereal and spiritual sound and a recent last name change to Elina Auriel, we discuss all these subjects in this interview.
1_ Elina, you were doing so much in your teenage years from being a pro athlete for 11 years to protagonist in multiple theater plays. Do you feel they went by too fast as you were taking so much responsibilities? Or was it something you loved so much you didn’t think if you were being an overachiever?
I knew I was an overachiever and even when it was often at an unhealthy pace still I was proud of it because this was valued within my family. I definitely threw myself into all those activities to survive living in a very complicated parental home; the interpersonal and interfamilial dynamics were very difficult. There was psychological and physical abuse under the guise of discipline and there was a lot of fear under the façade of a perfect family. I was molested by two cousins of mine when I was 8 but I didn’t feel safe to tell anyone. So of course, I was constantly focused on escaping from my life and as long as it was through music and sports it was OK. Growing up in Athens, Greece I saw that most young people were consuming substances or doing crazy things to escape their reality – which I don’t judge – but for me it was always an inner understanding with myself that I will never touch substances. I have never even smoked a cigarette in my life or drank alcohol really. In fact I was always made fun of as a teenager for not doing those things. People actually did not invite me to do things together. I was very lonely as a teenager but on the outside I would excel so it balanced things out. I had my own world of being creative and focusing on mastery in a way. So for me, music and creativity were my substance abuse, so to speak. It took me to great places but at the same time I didn’t have the same experiences as everyone else my age so it was very difficult to bond with other teenagers when I was on stage and being celebrated on the weekends and then back to school on Monday being treated like a nobody. To survive feeling excluded I would go and achieve something else. It kept me sane because everywhere I went I was bullied and excluded so I needed something to steady me since also at home you were only appreciated if you were overworking yourself. Finally when I was a grown up and no longer under the authority of others, I was able to screw back the tempo and work within myself to find value in me just being a human being and not needing to overachieve to justify my existence. I hope that answers it.
2_ You tried different musical genres over your career. What pushed you to the sonic landscape you are in today and the themes of survival, betrayal, pain, heartbreak, fight and renewal?
Well, no matter if I was doing metal music in my earlier days or with my debut solo album as Elina Laivera and my currently in-the-making music as Elina Auriel, I always had this focus on themes around death and rebirth. I feel that my life experiences just made me so interested and intrigued by the concept of personal transformation and alchemy as an esoteric process. I consider myself an alchemist in the sense that I have been through very extreme things in my life and yet I didn’t allow any of those things to stop me living my life and creating and being free from other people’s authority – this is so important to me and it is even the reason why I have been self-employed, I do not like having anyone on top of me. I always found a way to bounce back even when it took me years of personal healing and there is beauty in that. I want to show that what is broken can always find itself back to wholeness and to honor the dark parts of the journey just as much as the bright ones. Everyone likes to share only the bright days. I like to remind there is magic in the times we are broken because it is a place that requires learning to surrender to something greater than your ego and it takes great self-responsibility and spiritual strength. So I like to speak about these things in my music and I also love genre-hoping in my personal discography as that allows me to create around those topics using a different sound palette each time, like a different perspective each time.
3_ Your voice is very beautiful and unique with very a precise whistle register. Having studied at different institutions you are also a vocal coach. What would you say are the most common mistakes people who want to sing do?
Thank you so much, I am currently at a point where I also like my voice. I think the most common misconception is that to sing higher notes people have to squeeze themselves or they have to push or blast their vocal cords to sing louder but you don’t have to do any of that. Of course, I speak a bit from a convenient place because I am a soprano coloratura and high notes naturally happen for me but with belting especially I had to learn to drop into my body in a very relaxed manner to achieve high power notes. You just need very good support from your core with your diaphragmatic breathing and supporting even all the way down to your pelvic floor and then how you use your head cavities like the dome at the back of your skull to create this amplifying effect. So focusing on unlocking the throat and then you don’t have to get louder because with the right support and placement the sound gets bigger by itself because you create this big dome of sound at the back of your head while you have a good core support and all that with almost minimum muscle tension. I always say to my students: “You have to imagine you just woke up on a casual morning, you are walking into your kitchen and your body is having a relaxed yawn, almost even like you are bored – zero tension”. All the intensity and emotional explosions you see happening on stage is just performance, it is not technique, we actually do it on top of technique to spice things up.
“When we heal, we step into our creator power and that is why I do what I do, to help others”
4_ Singing is technical as a passage of air through the vocal folds but it’s also an expression of the soul. In a world where so many mental ailments proliferate how has music helped you heal in your particular journey?
Enormously! However, in the past I abused music. I used to make music to help me cope with pain instead of addressing the pain head-on and resolving it. So music was like a drug, it helped me escape but it was not helping me actually heal so that I don’t need to escape my life. Now I know to sit down and work through my emotions and resolve the pain and then I go back to write music about the experience. Personally, I do not believe in receiving counseling, but I believe in self-healing. I absolutely struggled with severe depression for years before I discovered tools such as EFT (emotional freedom techniques), meridian tapping, EMDR, journaling, prayer, listening to ALPHA brainwaves (specifically 10.6 Hz), hypnotherapy (especially the Simpson Protocol) and finally going to a naturopathic healer to run checks on what is going on with my gut health and fixing those issues like food allergies that were flooding my system with stress hormones and depleting my neurotransmitters, vitamins and minerals. So… there are all those issues that music alone cannot fix. We need proper tools to help us and I found those I mentioned to help me process emotional energy that had been stuck in my body. After that, I vowed to never again use music to numb pain and to instead look at self-expression as something that needs me to be healthy on all levels – mind, body, psyche. Music cannot be used solely as escapism. I used to do that when I felt my life was not in my hands and others had power over me but even there I had a choice even if it was a tough one – I left a super abusive relationship and set myself free and since then I say to myself that if there is something I do not like in my life, I have to find a way to change it. Music is not meant to be used as a bandage to cover up the festering wounds. But it does help move emotional energy as you navigate healing and implementing changes in real life. Myself as an artist, I make a point to say that I am not here to entertain you so you can escape your life, I am here to make you think and reflect on your journey and your power, to help you feel things that maybe you suppressed because there was no safe space for you to feel those things truthfully… and that is the beginning of the healing journey. If you allow yourself to feel it, you acknowledge it and can start thinking about how to resolve it and create a life you don’t need to escape from by consuming more than you produce. Because the truth is that when we heal, we step into our creator power and that is why I do what I do, to help others step into their creator power whether through art or through making changes in their lives.
5_ You have your own studio in Germany where you record your own music, give classes, organize chants and are also a meditation coach and energy healer. What have you discovered in these realms linked to faith, identity and creativity?
“Creativity is the bridge: it connects all of that and ourselves back to our inner essence, and at the same time, it connects us to each other”
I would say it has taught me that music and energy healing are not separate practices but different expressions of the same truth. Faith, for me, is the trust that when I show up—whether in the studio, in a class, or in a healing session—something authentic will emerge. I’ve discovered that identity isn’t fixed; it shifts every time we dare to express ourselves fully. And creativity is the bridge: it connects all of that and ourselves back to our inner essence, and at the same time, it connects us to each other. Our studio is such a versatile space – you have an orchestra recording in the morning, then a band is doing songwriting, then I come in and do hands-on energy healing in the evening. It is crazy sometimes how high-vibrational this place stays but we also protect it a lot energetically. It used to be a bunker from the 2nd World War so there was quite some dense energy there at the beginning but I actually get paid to go to people’s places and even businesses like hotels and restaurants to do spirit releasements and so I knew what to do for the studio when we realized we had a full-blown haunting (believe it or not), and we haven’t had any issues since I energetically cleared the place. We are very selective with the kind of people we let enter. We do not entertain drinking or substance use in our spaces as this tends to lower the vibration of a place and we want the studio to be a safe space for artistic or healing processes. It has been such a blessing that we rolled our sleeves up back in 2018 and built the studio together with my man, Jovan Ducret-who is also the only person I entrust with my music, he has produced everything I have done since 2017… and it was the funniest thing ever renovating this beast for 9 months with zero knowledge, just watching YouTube videos on how to drill holes on 5 meter walls that have iron enforcements in them. It was madness but when we finished and opened our doors in February 2019, we were overjoyed. Having this studio, the way it looks even with those wooden floors – I dreamt of this since I was 12 singing karaoke in my bedroom and pretending I was in such a studio. So I also learned that when dreams are to be made manifest, the right people and circumstances will line up.
“I am grateful for how the Divine has always placed the right stepping stones along my path for me to bridge over to the right things each time”
6_ You moved from your original country from Greece to Germany. What was the reason behind that decision? Did you feel you had to exercise all the muscles of your courage?
Oh Gosh, Germany has been wild, are you ready for this? Because I could write a book about it but here’s the story very briefly and very honestly because I am proud of my journey and the things I had to rise above. I just knew I wanted to move away from Greece – I never felt at home there – the culture was very particular and if you are not into that culture, there’s no space for you. It definitely took courage to leave at 19 and I am grateful I was so naïve back then with stars in my eyes because knowing what I know now, my plan was crazy, I had nothing set, I had two suitcases and that was it – and thank God my parents had put some money aside for me to survive for a while since I had been pestering them since I was 14 that I wanted to pursue music abroad. At first, I went to England for a while, just testing the waters, singing for the band of a friend for some time and it was one of the most beautiful times of my life, it was very healing just to mingle with the British people, the culture, the spirit of the land. To this day, they have my heart, I love England so much. But financially it didn’t work out. Now, before going to England, I had been in another band and we were thinking about relocating to Germany but I ended up being forced to walk away because of interpersonal dramas – which was a very common theme in my journey, unfortunately, until I learned to have good boundaries and to honor myself. So I ended up going to Germany by myself and it was just months before moving when I got together with a guy who was from Germany himself. I really took this as a sign like what are the odds. I believe this was something like a karmic connection and not a coincidence because when I shared my plans with him, he was overjoyed and offered to assist me with my music, as he claimed to have some good connections in the music industry but if I have to be honest even that didn’t matter to me because I was just so in love with him that I wanted to make Germany work just to be with him. I tell you, something WAS calling me to Germany and I feel this person was how the Universe lured me to move there because right after I moved, things started to fall apart and there were huge red flags everywhere around mostly infidelity and dishonesty but I ignored all that because… I was in love! In hindsight I also see that this person was highly emotionally manipulative and always managed to explain things away so it took me a good four years to realize he never intended to keep his promises to help me with my music – he literally parked me in an empty apartment to figure out things on my own in a foreign country while he was going around often using my financial resources, doing his life and coming back to me when he had nothing better to do, evading confrontations around him failing to help me with my music. Soon he became openly psychologically abusive, and I would find his indiscretions openly on his phone. It was heartbreaking to realize that my years between 21-25 had been wasted in false promises of love and assistance – and back then I believed these would have been my best years, especially because I was thinking in music industry terms. But I also felt very empowered to take my situation into my hands. I decided to leave that man but I had to wait for him to go through with an important audition because I didn’t want to ruin his chances at a better career so while he was away for weeks at a time and I waited for his return, I started writing my first album ‘Alchemy’ and that kept me going during that difficult time. Literally the same day that he came back from his audition and I was determined to break up with him, I met the love of my life. So I went from heartbreak to a miracle that healed my heart. So Germany has felt like a crazy ride and it definitely flexed my heart and also my intuition like really staying quiet to listen to the divine guidance at every step. I could not make those things up, how organically everything fell into place for me to be here now, doing music on my own terms, with true love and health in my life and structures that I built from the ground up – I feel my best years are now and those still to come. Germany changed my perspective on everything. It’s been the land where I had huge spiritual awakenings, where I created a different world for myself, I found my gifts, found incredible love. I believe I had to be here to experience all those miracles and that relationship with that man was probably the Universe giving me a reason to be here. I am grateful for how the Divine has always placed the right stepping stones along my path for me to bridge over to the right things each time.
“We heal with each other because most of us the very trauma we have is relational trauma so we need health new relationships and communities to help us heal”.
7_ We creatives are highly sensitive people who tend to overthink and sometimes stress over the smallest things. How has energy healing and meditation has helped you calm down the noise of your own mind and help others calm theirs?
Yes, creative people are nothing but channels, we are very sensitive, many of us even incarnate on this Earth plane with a different genetic predisposition to be perceptive and highly empathic. We have come to change a desensitized system from the inside. So of course this system tries to pathologize our profound ability to feel and to attune and to channel. This creates rejection and distortions emerging from that can look like depression, anxiety, dissociation, not being embodied because we do not feel safe to be in our bodies. It is crazy to me how even when I used to work at schools I started noticing the last years how they started medicating the kids for being childlike and curious and energetic. They want robots. And this is imposed onto adults as well. Now imagine, as creatives and sensitives, we don’t do well in such structures. That’s why structures like what we have created at our Studio are so important. We need more spaces for energetic rehabilitation. People walk around holding it all in and now even creatives are being censored – you can’t say this, your expression is too much. For me this kind of life was unbearable so I made some very tough choices and exited those spaces where I was being addressed this way. I do things now my way at my own spaces. But healing from the trauma of trying to exist in this sick society is what lead me to become energy healer and at first really I was just learning things to help myself. I never thought I would end up helping others, as well. And there is healing that we find also in community. We heal with each other because most of us the very trauma we have is relational trauma so we need health new relationships and communities to help us heal. So often even in the psychotherapy space they pathologize your nervous system for being ‘too sensitive’; they tell you ‘oh you are dysregulated, here is a pill’ instead of looking into what happened to you to make you so hypervigilant? This society doesn’t like to acknowledge trauma but it likes to inflict it without accountability. What this means for us, sensitives, creatives… we have to stop pathologizing ourselves and tend to our nervous systems. I mentioned earlier a few tools that helped me but also as quantum energy healer I work with Archangelic energy and this is something that can be measured – it affects the auric field of the person, to clear excess static and psychic smog and to help recalibrate the quantum field around the person so they can tap back into their self-healing ability. These practices will be our guiding light into the future and we want to commit to tending to ourselves if we want to see a healthier life for all of us – sensitives and those who are still catching up with their ability to feel empathy. But seriously, it is important for us, to be clearing our energy daily. There is a lot that we absorb as sensitives. Most of the stress you mentioned is not even ours. We pick up on things because we heal others around us by proxy so often. Many of us are transmuters but we don’t have to accumulate it all on us. Burning white sage, palo santo, juniper, mugwort or doing grounding or shielding meditations – I love the 12D shield by Lisa Renee (there is a guided visualization video on YouTube), making sure we do cord cutting, addressing personal trauma through journaling or shadow work or meridian tapping, working with aromatherapy, sound healing, quantum energy healing, clearing out our relationships – these are non-negotiables at this time because yes, being sensititves we often get so overloaded that we go crazy with stress over the smallest things – this is when you know you have some energies on you that are not yours and you got to clear them. Stress to me, is a signal that our nervous system is dealing with something that is not organically native to it. So I work with prayer or smudge my aura or do some light-language and stress is gone. Coincidence? I think not. Looking into the work of Dr. Bruce Lipton or Dr. Joe Dispenza – these people have even measured scientifically the impact of energy healing practices like the ones I mentioned. This is not wishful thinking.
8_ What do expect to accomplish in the following years with your new projects and in your personal life?
Honestly, my number one priority at this time is to always move in alignment with my inner guidance and not the whims of the world around me. That means I could have a plan or a goal today but tomorrow I receive from my intuitive guidance that it is best I change course. I respect that. I follow through with my intuitive guidance I receive. It has led me to great happiness and health. This means I must have people around me who also operate this way and do not judge me for who I am. I cannot have people close to me who spend time in my energy and go ‘oh right, she’s crazy’ – so definitely I am hoping to accomplish to continue being this selective about those I allow close to me because this can make you or break you and for me this upholds health in my life and work. This is why I only work with Jovan Ducret, he is like me on this matter, he is a highly attuned person, spiritually and very grounded into healthy embodiment. I would love to keep on creating beautiful music with him and I am starting to consider putting together a tour to take my music on the road again. We almost did my first solo tour in 2020 but COVID came up. Currently I am in the studio finishing a project that doesn’t have my name on it and right after I am looking to go in the studio to finish my own new music. I have been off social media since May so I am right in incubation phase with a number of projects coming out – some of them are for other artists I write for like some ghostwriting projects, licensing for movies etc. I want to go back to Scotland and do more energy work there. I am also considering relocating again at some point in the future.
9_ You changed your name to Elina Auriel. What does it mean to you emotionally and spiritually to step into this new phase of our career and life?
I’ve always gone by my family name because I wanted to make my family proud like make this name justice. But in the last years I found myself not identifying with the name anymore. It had become this very heavy, full of responsibility thing that I felt its weight drowning my self-expression. I do not create to make anyone proud. I create because this is my primary impulse as an embodied being. I am not my surname. I am me. If I try to define me, this is also very hard to do. But I identify with equal doses of light and darkness. So I was sitting in meditation inquiring what was my name to be as an artist from now on. And the word Oriel came to me which I researched, it actually is a type of gothic architecture for windows so it means a window through which bright light is pouring. I like the concept because you would find an oriel window at a gothic cathedral – these are usually darker places and the oriel windows are the only source of light. So me with my music and my creativity – I thought – this is what I want it to represent, a window out of darkness into the bright light. It is very voluntary, you can choose when you want to emerge from the darkness and look to the light. I didn’t want it to feel pushy like ‘here come the light’! Because sometimes we like to know that the light is there awaiting for us but we still want to dwell a bit longer in the darkness. And that should be OK. So it is pronounced ORIEL but written AURIEL so now the meaning is golden light from AURIS meaning gold. Golden light to me is representation of the cosmic Christic light. Not Christ as in religion, the Christ consciousness is non-denominational and means to be anointed, to be blessed. I decided to keep my first name, Elina, due to its direct connection to light (it means ray of sun).
10_ Finally, do you believe like your album says that love is the ultimate alchemy?
Back when I wrote the song ‘Alchemy’it was about trying to love someone who is… not making it easy for you to love them yet you still try and try and you end up doing alchemy in the sense that you mix and match but it never really works (at least historically we are being told that the alchemists never managed to actually turn lead into gold so I used that connection). But today yes, I believe that love and self-respect is the ultimate alchemy. Generally, taking something and making something better out of it. And if something is not salvageable to leave it be and make something better out of yourself because ultimately you are all you have and those who come into your life they better be at that same level so they are adding positively to your process of inner divine alchemy and not acting as an obstacle to your organic path.
Paula Cristina Gouveia