'Too much is not enough...'

I had a text message from my Reiki Master letting me know that she had a spare space on her a Level 1 Reiki course she was running, and I was welcome to join in. I felt intuitively that it would help her if I attended, so I agreed.

When I arrived, she asked me told me that we would be doing some crystal work, so I should start by clearing my stones, and energising them with my intentions.

I decided to work with my citrine stone, ruling my third chakra.

For over 4 weeks now I am aware of extremely destructive behaviour that I have been engaged in.

Chocolate. I worked out that in the last two weeks I have probably consumed more than 1kg of chocolate. I was eating it incessantly, unwontedly – without knowing why even as I placed each piece in my mouth.




I realised that this was a compulsion, something I was powerless to control. I felt it hurting me, and yet I continued. Feeling simultaneously sick and a strange kind of high every time I went too far – but unable to stop until I got there.




My daily practice of 90 minutes of yoga has stopped. I feel the weight building around my abdomen and my thighs storing up fat for the winter. Only it’s summer. And this is not what I want to be doing.

Something in me has been wrong.


One morning last week, walking to work, gentle, guiding firm words come clearly in my mind:

‘YOU ARE USING CHOCOLATE TO BLOCK YOUR CONFIDENCE. YOU ARE AVOIDING BEING CONFIDENT. FOR SO LONG, YOU WEREN’T READY. BUT YOU CLEARED YOUR FIRST. AND YOU HEALED YOUR SECOND. AND NOW WHEN YOU COULD STEP IN TO CONFIDENCE, YOU ARE AVOIDING THIS. THE CHOCOLATE IS A WAY OF CUTTING IT OFF…’


I knew there was truth in that. The chocolate, I had come to realise, was a form of protection. I have always done it. I had used chocolate as a little girl living in a violent and traumatic household. Every morning, on the way to school, I would buy a bar of chocolate, and eat it before school. Soon I was buying two, and then three. I remember the shopkeeper saying with genuine concern ‘You’ll ruin your teeth. You shouldn’t have so much..’ I knew he was right. But I couldn’t stop. As it melted in my mouth, I felt temporarily transported. I felt warm and somehow safe. And it was all sweet.





I’ve never really shaken the habit in my adult life, although for the most part it’s been a pleasure and not a source of pain.


But recently, I’ve been eating chocolate just like that little girl, two or three bars or more every day, and wanting more knowing how sick I’ll feel. I keep hearing a U2 song going around my head:

‘Too much is not enough…’





I have been clearing out my second chakra. Energetically it represents issues of sexuality, material prosperity, relationships. These are all areas where I have experienced dramatic, painful and recent loss. As I have meditated and worked on healing my second chakra, painful memories of childhood trauma and abuse have surfaced. I have traced their impact in to the choices I made in my adult life.

I uncovered the root of the imbalances within me, located according to holistic health in my second chakra, that had manifested in my life as my fundamental inability to form healthy boundaries, leading to a pattern of love and loss.

It's been a traumatic and painful and solitary journey. But an illuminating and worth while one. I found what I had to let go of, healing it and forgiving everyone involved. I feel it healed, cleared and vibrant. I have a good sense of respectful boundaries, of how to define healthy ones for me. It’s something I’ve had to learn, for myself these last few months.

But as all of this has been surfacing, I find myself eating chocolate at a rate I can’t understand in my mind, and which my body can not keep up with.

‘CONFIDENCE’ I hear in my head. ‘THIS IS ABOUT YOU AVOIDING YOUR OWN CONFIDENCE…’






Three days later I am at a Reiki Level 1 Refresher course that’s being run by my Reiki Master. As if homing in from a distance on my lack of clarity and focus, she sent me a text saying she had spare place for me if I wanted to take it as a refresher. I said yes.

She asked me to start by working with crystals. I laid them out and looked at them. I decided to send energy with my Citrine. It represents the third chakra, also known as the Solar Plexus, the seat of confidence in your body.





I had bought the stone three months ago and remember picking it for its gentleness. It was almost translucent yellow, like a diffused shaft of sun light.

I held the stone in my hands and began to look at it. I was completely shocked when I found a dark black/grey line running through it. I’d never seen the mark before, and I’m sure I would have noticed it had it been there. It’s such a small, translucent stone – what I’ve always liked about it is its translucence as if it's beaming out a soft ray of light from the inside.

I would have definitely noticed before if it had a dark line running through it whn I bought it, I thought. But there was one there now. Clear and dark and etched in to inside. As I turned it round, I saw there was a clump of grey/dark dirt embedded on to the stone too. I couldn’t believe it. How have I never seen that before ? I was convinced it wasn’t there before. But it’s there now!

How funny I thought. This stone is scarred and all dirty, like I’ve never seen it before, and it represents CONFIDENCE.

Which is the word that came to me with the chocolate.

I took it as a sign that I need to heal this in me.

I sat with the stone and decided to send Reiki to it, to clear it. It was intense and overwhelming, almost making me faint. You can send energy to anything. To thoughts of your loved ones (most of us do all day), to the new dress you’ve seen that you’ve not yet bought, (guilty!), to what you plan to do with your other half when you get them home. Sending energy to a stone is no different. You just hold the stone and think, INTEND, for it to be pure, for it to be clear of negativity, for it to be full of its own resonance and positive energy.

Usually it takes time to warm up the stone with the energy you’re sending ( a bit like when you try to thing good things about your mother in law…there’s maybe a bit of a block at first, but if you keep thinking lovingly, in the end you do manage to feel a warm connection to something about her), but it hasn’t ever – to me atleast – felt overwhelming, like I’m going to faint, or pass out.

But with this stone, that’s how it felt. It was like it was so full of something not very nice, so blocked with negative energy that it had absorbed, that as I held it and sent it energy, it took a lot from me to clear it. It did, in the end. But it took a long time and I felt drained, my mouth dry.


When it was clear, I empowered it with the thoughts that this stone can help me radiate my confidence, like the sunbeam shining from within it. It could help me heal any behaviours I was involved in that were preventing that or would undermine or hurt me in that wish.


I recently visited the Spiritualist Association healing centre, and was asked if I would like a healing. I said yes out of curiosity. I asked the healer to help me clear my blood and lymph so that I could get back my clear skin, and for healing in my digestive and intestinal systems.

I knew that these were the areas of my body that my chocolate binging had been affecting.

I didn’t know whether the healing had an effect on me at the time, or whether the reiki stone is having an effect, but I do know that for the first time on 4 weeks, on the way home after the Reiki session I did not want to buy any chocoloate.

The next morning I was up at 4:45 am and practicing my Yoga for a full 90 minutes.

The day after, I felt sick – so sick – in my abdomen and in my intestine area. Queasy, hot, sick. I couldn’t touch chocolate.

I didn't feel well, but I knew something was healing. Like I was shifting the weeks of abuse I have put in to my body. It felt like my stomach was shifting it all at once.

A week later, I haven't touched chocolate. I don't feel sick in my intestines anymore.

All those moments when I would grasp for the chocolate - they still occur, those moments when I feel myself wishing, looking, searching for something to make me feel safe. In those moments now though, I find myself consciously choosing my own beauty, power, strength and wellbeing instead. And chocolate doesn't fit with those choices.

Which means maybe the healer did heal or the Reiki did go to my third chakra.
Because finally enough is enough. Something in me is healed.



And I feel my confidence returning.