Fife homeopath - paula millwood

19/05/2025

Just in case you were looking….😉

Spell Songs is a musical evolution of both The Lost Words & The Lost Spells books by acclaimed author Robert Macfarlane and award-winning illustrator Jackie ...

19/05/2025

A very special evening of Spell Songs in Edinburgh yesterday inspired me to share some of the words to the Lost Words Blessing. I urge you to go and listen even if folk music isn’t your gig - the words are beautiful.

The archetypal animal creatures (and plants!) found in stories are also found in homeopathy. There is a beautiful resonance here.

Many people coming to work with me are feeling a sense of despair and hopelessness in response to unsettling events and changes in the world. Being present with the grief seems to be an unavoidable part of our unfolding cultural and societal story. And while the story is not a new story, I am more and more drawn to myths and folk/fairy stories as essential maps to navigate turbulence in what ever way it shows up in our world. I’ve witnessed how homeopathy prescribed this way, meeting like with like, has reached into the deepest stories and risen up to the surface in the form of resilience, ease and peace.

Artist, Jackie Morris painted the raven (jackdaw, crow) during the final blessing by Spell Songs and gently invited the audience up to meet the perpetrators of harm, with beauty, song, story and hope.

I’ve been studying Raven as a remedy as well as the ones that inhabit the land close to where I live and the ones that appear in stories as harbingers of both knowledge and wisdom. Raven (Corvus Corvax) is a remedy which calls us home. It is a remedy of contrasts: light and dark, right and wrongs, good and bad, dissociation while seeking to connect. It was lovely to have this mirrored back to me.

I’ll put out another post, with details of a what this might look like for anyone who is interested. Nicki and I are going to host a wee event at Monimail Tower in Fife at the end of June focusing on a folk tale, The Selkie.

22/01/2025

In collaboration with Nicki Wilkins, we are excited to be gathering women together, to go on a brief, fairy-tale adventure into the psycho-spiritual and soulful dynamic of menopause and beyond.

Working with stories is a Jungian concept that enables us to make the unconscious, conscious. The characters, the nature of their experience, and the meaningful symbols in fairy tales and folk tales will resonate differently for everyone. But coming into a personal relationship with these archetypes can open us up to what is needed on this path to embracing elderhood.

During our menopause years, the deep longing to rest, slow down and take stock can seem at odds with a growing sense of urgency and busy everyday demands. These sessions are intended to resource us to have a foot in both worlds – celebrating the whole of ‘what was’, ‘what is’ and ‘what is yet to come’.

3 consecutive Tuesday evenings in February from 6-7.30pm at eden therapies in Cupar.

• Tuesday 11th Feb: Red Riding Hood
• Tuesday 18th Feb: The Selkie
• Tuesday 25th Feb: Baba Yaga and Vasalisa

To join us for these in-person sessions, please contact Nicki by emailing nwilkinsmentor@gmail.com. Places are limited to 8.

24/11/2024

Wow! Back in Fife after spending a few days at the 100th Faculty of Homeopathy conference in Edinburgh with a large gathering of inspiring humans who speak my language! Head bursting with influx of thoughts and new learnings.

Oestrogen (follicullinum) is a remedy I use frequently when a client present with hormonal imbalance and feels lost - lost in relationships, lost sense of self, living out other people’s expectations, confused about sense of purpose and their place in the world.

And yesterday, I learned about a relatively new addition to the homeopathy pharmacy, testosterone. We see how it brings in the ‘yang’ aspect when a person feels out of alignment, not in their flow. Also with a need for purpose, testosterone is indicated where the masculine care and support from father is absent or lost. Unsurprisingly, it is suited to both male and female clients, where the themes centre around function in work and a need to provide and take care are also present alongside physical presentation.

The remedies prepared from human hormones are called sarcodes and many times I’ve witnessed the restorative ‘coming back to self’ when I’ve prescribed them. Excuse the pun, but really excited to have testosterone in the bag now too!

24/10/2024

Compassionate conversations about dying, death and grief in Cupar at YMCA - 4 Tuesdays in November.

This is an in person gathering for ANYONE who would like to feel more brave, secure and confident to have, what can feel like difficult, conversations around death and dying - from care plans and wills to what dying is like and the impact of loss and grief.

For online courses, you can link in to the Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care https://www.goodlifedeathgrief.org.uk

16/10/2024

Kirsty Young interviews Gabor Mate. Accessible and so transparently clear. If anyone needs reassurance of evidence based cause of dis-ease alongside straightforward observation.
Everything is connected.
Homeopathy and psychotherapy are both potent modalities that consider the intricate complexities of our past experience, our ancestral stories, our culture, our parenting and our environment on our bodies physiological systems - how dis-ease manifests. Working in this way - by paying attention, facing difficulties, exploring new patterns - we can reconcile and heal these deep disturbances.
And looking within doesn’t necessarily mean introspection. Emotions and beliefs influence our physiological health. Neither easy nor straightforward, a compassionate internal enquiry can lead to healthier and happier bodies.
If you get chance to listen, I hope you find some insights in compassionately sitting with Kirsty and Gabor.

Kirsty Young asks physician Gabor Maté what advice he would give his younger self.

19/09/2024

No point me making a video and reinventing the wheel! I appreciate Dr KushMarks no nonsense, realistic, honest approach to talking about causes of dis-ease and the broader context of our environment. It’s the same story I tell - and would more publicly if I wasn’t so self conscious about my voice 😂

The King has cancer, so does his daughter-in-law, but there are millions of others who have it too. Homeopathy does not work, does chemotherapy?What is it? H...

12/09/2024

Veda Austin is a water researcher investigating the living nature of water and its dynamic potential. Her fringe, exciting ideas and observations are opening up avenues for further understanding about this simple, everyday, taken for granted, life sustaining molecule.

Still in experimental infancy, her explanations of a quantum perspective provide a wee nod to the mechanisms for how water stores the memory of what it is exposed to, which make plausible sense to me as a homeopath.

And she’s coming to Scotland as part of a UK tour to share her work. Pitlochry no less. If you’re interested to learn more, I’m thinking this will be a fascinating talk.

Join Veda for her first ever trip to Scotland! She'll be giving a two hour talk about her incredible work with water, then signing books and chatting with attendees.

07/07/2024

What a time for shifting and restructuring out there in the world…and we can all make a difference in our own small (and big) ways. Collectively and individually choosing to touch Mother Earth graciously, eating real food from the land, honouring our beautiful bodies, connecting lovingly with others. Giving thanks for the shared air we breathe.

Practising a sustainable form of medicine is my way, my offering. Homeopathy (and my pluralistic approach to psychotherapy) have become how I make a difference in service to my community of people. Serving humanity, animals and Mother Earth does it for me 💚

27/05/2024

I’m thinking the pollen count might be graded as “low’ today…what’s with the hailstones in May?! For some reason this led me to make a strangely tenuous word association in my head between ‘hailstone’ and ‘histamine’ and then ‘hay-fever’! Probably not that tenuous because several clients have recently presented in clinic with hay fever and skin allergies, trying to avoid anti-histamine dependency. And also I was just reading that the expected growth market for anti-histamines was set at 8.7% between 2018 and 2026 https://www.acutemarketreports.com/report/antihistamines-market and I’ve been wondering (agitated) why questions are not being asked about what’s going on and why this should be the case? Why are innate, natural immune responses being suppressed and superseded by pharmaceutical pills? I mean…I’m just wondering...🤔

Even if it does look a bit boring, histamine is a good molecule! It plays a vital role in our body’s inflammatory immune response as well as regulating healthy body functions like our circadian sleep-wake cycles and cognitive function. Due to a number of different histamine receptors in cells, it's interdependent systemic action literally influences how we experience and go through each day. Fair play, I also get that it can also wreak inflammatory havoc if histamine receptors are blocked or if our body overreacts to otherwise harmless allergens and produces too much of the stuff. This can usually be pinpointed to an imbalance in the digestive system (gut dysbiosis) and/or elevated levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. But we’d need to go down another rabbit hole of explanations for that! Short version – what you eat and how you cope with stress matters.

Anyway, I just want to say that homeopathic remedies can, and do, help with histamine 'intolerance', especially when manifesting as hay fever and skin allergies. They don’t suppress histamine production or block receptors. Instead they support your innate (complex, yet simple) body wisdom and cellular function so that histamine receptors in cells can do what evolution has created them to do, i.e. mediate a natural immune response to allergens and antibodies! They have no side effects and can be safely used at home and repeated if symptoms return after 2-3 hours. I have found, in over 2 decades of practice as a homeopath, that many patients report a lessening of their seasonal hay fever symptoms after constitutional homeopathic treatment, when their initial reason for using homeopathy was for some other ailment or set of symptoms. Often a combination of remedies is best for acute symptoms when exposure to allergens is most intense!

And now the sun is out. Hopefully you might signpost allergy sufferers towards homeopathy, happy histamine healthy eating, stress management - and hailstones no more!

16/04/2024

It’s only taken about 6 weeks of sniffing, label checking, cataloging, sorting and storing this homeopathic pharmacy I inherited from a wonderful retiring homeopath. An amazing addition of potent medicine to add to my existing pharmacy ready for anyone who might need it. I haven’t got round to merging them yet….maybe in another 6 weeks and another IKEA delivery!
My new (self-appointed) title is ‘quantum medicine woman’! The ‘science’ is finally catching up ….but you can still call me homeopath or psychotherapist - as you prefer, I’m not fussy!

10/04/2024

Such is the way with synchronous meetings… these rich little cyclamen flowers danced into view a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t resist photographing! Then a few days ago, I had happy feedback from a client who I recently prescribed Cyclamen 200c for. I am sharing some of his story with permission. Cyclamen is not a remedy I prescribe often but mostly I think on Cyclamen as a female remedy for menstrual irregularities with gastric complaints and eye troubles / vertigo. This client however, is a male in his late 50’s who reported having an enlarged prostate but normal PSA levels. His presenting symptoms were stitching pains and swelling at prostate with frequent and sudden urge to p*e. Diagnosed by GP as chronic prostatitis, not responding to 2 x antibiotic treatments. It was a visit to an enlightened optician that prompted him to come and try homeopathy. Alongside the prostate issue, he was suffering from frequent dizzy spells when out walking and getting headaches with visual disturbance like black floaters and dull vision.

At our first meeting in November last year, I was also confronted by his depressed state and a deep sorrow alongside his physical presentation. Sorrow that extended to the loss of mother in early childhood but also a deep sorrow for the world and their part in that for which they felt guilt at turning away from. It all being too much, it was easier to go inward, to sleep, to keep himself to himself and sink into a state of indifference and self reproach.

What surprised me most was that, despite feeling so bleak, this man went to work and carried on with ‘business as normal’. When I reflected on how difficult this must be for him, he responded by saying that he didn’t want to burden anyone with his problems or let colleagues down. But acknowledged this only added to his sense of isolation. Homeopathic remedies Nat-mur and Aurum both gave some relief initially and allowed for more emotional expression. Although there was some small improvement in the frequency of p*eing, the ongoing inflammation alongside the visual symptoms led me to consider Cyclamen 200c. Taken daily for 5 days initially and then weekly for the past 6 weeks, both the prostatitis and dizziness have fully resolved with no other medical interventions.

In his last session, he remarked how the combination of homeopathy alongside the therapeutic benefit of being listened to, has supported him towards recovery of both his physical and mental health. And that his SLR camera is back in action as he is rekindling his love of photography in the outdoors. It is this last piece, witnessing the joy of a forgotten hobby, that helps me to understand the real healing magic of homeopathy – and my photograph (not with SLR camera!) hopefully captures something of the beauty of cyclamen.

I am grateful for permission to share such a lovely case and hope his story inspires others.