MINDFULNESS is medicine

Gisèle Wertheim Aymés speaks to Dr Simon Whitesman (MBChB), practitioner of medical psychotherapy at Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital in Cape Town. Whitesman is the coordinator of the postgraduate certificate training in Mindfulness-Based Interventions at Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, director and chairperson of the Institute for Mindfulness South Africa (IMISA), and co-director of the first Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme in South Africa. He has received certification as a teacher in MBSR from the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness, and in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the South African Institute for Psychotherapy.

Q How did a medical doctor become chairman of the Institute of Mindfulness?

I always wanted to be a doctor. However, when I became one, the experience was nothing that I had imagined. There was a strong