Mark Quirk runs Mindfulness Berkshire. He’s passionate about helping to develop habits for healthy long lives, and mindfulness offers not only support for good mental health but also an approach to making healthy choices in all parts of work and life.
In 2012 he re-trained in Psychology following a successful career in the world of IT, mostly at Microsoft. He was fascinated with the human mind and the potential to make a positive difference in people’s lives at home and work. He started a training and consulting practice focused on enhancing human performance, in lock-step with improved resilience and wellbeing; and in 2015 created Mindfulness Berkshire to help extend his mindfulness teaching outside of the workplace.
His path into teaching mindfulness was somewhat accidental, starting with a university assignment that required examining and comparing three types of intervention. His first choice of intervention turned out to have little supporting evidence for its suggested benefits. Whereas, to his surprise, mindfulness was supported by a swathe of evidence from thousands of studies, coupled with a wide range of benefits and broad applicability from workplaces, sports and athletics to clinical intervention. Here began Mark’s journey into deeper mindfulness practice and eventually teaching, running his first training in 2013.
He holds a master’s degree in applied positive psychology (MAPP) – where he conducted primary research into applying meditation in the workplace and its impact on resilience. He has formally trained as a mindfulness teacher according to the guidelines set out by the British Association of Mindfulness-Based Approaches – which used to be called the UK Network for Mindfulness-based Teacher Training Organisations. This training path is required by those wishing to teach MBCT (Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy), a derivative of MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), recommended for certain conditions to the NHS by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK. He is also trained in the use of ACT – Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which stems from the behavioural and cognitive therapy models.
Mark is also a coach on the Aura Health platform where he also shares some of his meditation practices, and he is a Precision Nutrition certified nutrition coach, a certified master health coach, and critically, he also regularly practices mindfulness, which is essential not only as a mindfulness teacher but also as a business owner and especially as a parent.