Mei-Lin Wu

Mei-Lin Wu trained as an osteopath at the British School of Osteopathy and as a craniosacral therapist in Bristol. Her practice has grown quieter every year since. She now works almost entirely with people in long recovery from a serious illness, treatment or event: cancer survivors, people emerging from a complex hospital stay, women recovering from gynaecological surgery, and people with ME/CFS or long-Covid.

The work

A typical session is sixty minutes. Most of it is the client fully clothed on a soft table while Mei-Lin offers gentle skilled contact at the head, sacrum, feet or hands. There is almost no talking; what talking there is happens before and after, and is brief.

Background and training

Mei-Lin completed the four-year osteopathy degree at the British School of Osteopathy in 2004 and the two-year craniosacral diploma at the College of Cranio-Sacral Therapy in 2008. She has held part-time posts at two London women’s health clinics and was the in-house bodyworker at a Bristol oncology rehabilitation centre for eight years.

What she works with

Her work is for people whose nervous system has spent a long time in survival. The sessions are not corrective in the usual sense; she is not trying to fix anything. She is trying to make a quiet enough space for the body to begin its own recovery work in its own time.

In practice

She will not work with you if she thinks you should be seeing a doctor or a different specialist first. She is exact about that. She also will not see anyone more than once a week for the first month; the work needs time between sessions to settle.

I am not doing anything to you. I am being quiet enough that something in you can.

Outside the practice

She trains junior craniosacral therapists through the College of Cranio-Sacral Therapy and runs an annual day-retreat for healthcare workers at a small Quaker meeting house in Hertfordshire.

Most of my clients have spent years being treated. The thing they often need next is to not be treated for an hour.