Magis did a good job covering this some already but I'll also elaborate.
Not much is said in the quests about how exactly monks channel the aether/chakra, other than generally training at locations where great battles once took place in the past. Would that we had more details, but that's all we've got there.
For crystals, in addition to the examples of the corrupt crystals at the Burning Wall/Pharos Sirius/etc, from v1.0 there were also specific items called deaspected and overaspected crystals, which I suppose could be interpreted as void aspected in a way.
Magis brought up the THM questline for draining the aether of a living being but the CNJ quests also touch on this. Sylphie conjures curative magic from her own life force rather than borrowing from nature's aether reserves, which is said to be endangering her life (and was the cause of her mother's death as well). So you're pretty spot on there. The only thing I'd point out is that the primals are a little different as they're made of pure manifested aether, and can just be resummoned after they "die", but they do cease to exist for a time anyways until that resummoning happens.



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