The Science Behind Meditation in Newbies: Get Impressed

The Science Behind Meditation in Newbies: Get Impressed

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On this article we take a look at the science behind meditation, specializing in the advantages and results it reveals in freshmen.

As a long-term practitioner and meditation trainer, I’ve mentioned meditation with many skeptics and scientifically-minded individuals. I do know from expertise that there’s nonetheless a tonne of doubt and incredulity relating to its energy: “Is there any science behind meditation?” “What if we’re simply making it up?”

It’s definitely true that you could’t belief the whole lot you hear about this follow and needs to be skeptical about it.

However the advantages and results at the moment are plain. There’s increasingly more top-quality science behind meditation, and it confirms the ability of meditation for practitioners of all ranges.

Meditation, significantly mindfulness, is now a severe scientific software studied and carried out on the prime medical establishments around the globe.

I feel it’s essential to check the science behind meditation, particularly once you’re a newbie. Understanding that these methods have well-documented organic, psychological and neurological results will allow you to get motivated and keep motivated in periods of low motivation.

Moreover, one of many exceptional byproducts of our neuroscientific understanding of meditation is the power it provides us to grasp neuroplasticity.

The mind will not be – we’re not – mounted to be a sure approach perpetually. It’s extremely moldable. Meditation produces predictable neurological modifications, which turn out to be extra exceptional the extra we follow. Consider it as a wand for wielding the ability of neuroplasticity.


It is a information to the very best research I’ve discovered on the science behind meditation. I’ve made it extremely accessible to non-specialists whereas additionally together with sufficient technical phrases and nuance to maintain it scientifically sound. You may like to return again to this text a number of instances and reserve it as a reference for the long run.

The Science Behind Meditation: Finest Practices

Earlier than we discuss concerning the science behind meditation, it’s essential to grasp that meditation will not be new. It dates again hundreds of years, approach earlier than trendy science, and has been found and rediscovered again and again.

Amongst adepts, there’s little doubt that meditation brings exceptional subjective advantages and that these multiply as we follow.

That stated, science has turned its lens to meditation within the final fifty years, beginning with Daniel Goleman, Richard Davidson, and others.

The 2 proceed to mate. The science behind meditation has multiplied exponentially – actually – for the reason that 90s and 2000s. Tons of of latest research at the moment are printed yearly. There’s a tonne of stable science behind meditation in any respect ranges of follow.

However, as Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman say: “not the whole lot chalked as much as meditation’s magic really stands as much as rigorous exams.”

Public information of those research is skewed. We frequently don’t hear about probably the most stable conclusions, and those we hear about via soundbites and adverts are both false or are much more nuanced than how they’re introduced.

And unsurprisingly, analysis knowledge is commonly twisted or exaggerated to up its advertising and marketing energy and increase gross sales. One common app needed to pay a big nice when authorities businesses challenged their claims.

What’s extra, research on the science behind meditation are sometimes poor-quality. To verify the standard of research on lovingkindness meditation, Richie Davidson’s analysis group took 231 reviews on this method, and solely 37 met prime design requirements. That’s 16%: beneath 1 in 6.

The research typically make a tonne of basic statistical errors, like lack of replication, lack of lively management group to eradicate expectation results and different components, poor pattern sizes, confusion in terminology, and experimenter bias.

For instance, a lot of analysis into TM has been performed by employees on the organisation that oversees TM. It is a clear battle of curiosity. Research additionally are typically brief, which means it’s difficult to make conclusions about long-term development.

And if you need, you’ll find loads of research that present no modifications within the inhabitants studied.

To make sure, there’s top-class analysis on the market, and its implications are exceptional. However I wish to safeguard you towards the soundbites and headlines, mood your expectations on your personal follow, and encourage you to carry a scientific, goal mindset.

The science behind meditation on this article is all backed by gold-standard research, the cream of the crop by way of design. If there are design flaws in a selected examine, I’ll level them out.

Alternatively, there’s nonetheless a lot to be studied. Identical to just a few many years in the past we have been unaware of the harm brought on by smoking, we’re nonetheless largely at midnight concerning the neurology and biology of meditation follow.

The science behind meditation in beginners. Physiological, attentional and distress-related.The science behind meditation in beginners. Physiological, attentional and distress-related.

The Science Behind Meditation: Glossary

Check with this glossary for the definitions of technical phrases I take advantage of on this article on the science behind meditation. These seem in daring italics.

Energetic Group: In an experiment or examine, the lively group is shaped of members who obtain the principle therapy. This group is then in comparison with the management group to determine modifications and variations.

Amygdala: Deep mind community chargeable for evaluating threats and responding to them. It lights up once we’re uncovered to somebody who’s experiencing adverse feelings like worry or anger. If it perceives a menace or pressing scenario, it engages the fight-or-flight response, setting off a stream of hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. It’s additionally tied to facilities for consideration focusing and powerful emotional reactions.

Attentional Blink: From verywellmind.com: “Once you shift your focus from one factor to a different, a tiny hole in consideration referred to as attentional blink is created. It solely lasts for about half a second, so we barely discover it.”

Management group: Secondary group of members in an experiment who’re chosen to imitate the true group and supply significant comparability. Members of lively management group obtain comparable therapy, and a ready listing management group consists of people who’re on a ready listing to obtain the first therapy.

Cytokine: Identify for a bunch of proteins that sign immune cells to battle antibodies. Cytokine imbalance indicators stress, burnout, emotional frailty and untimely ageing.

DMN: Default Mode Community. Space of mind chargeable for thoughts wandering and rumination. It tends to activate once we’re not engaged in a job and different mind areas are inactive.

fMRI: Purposeful Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Mind imaging expertise that makes use of blood movement to measure exercise.

MEG: Magnetoencephalography. Mind imaging expertise that depends on the magentic fields created by electrical currents within the mind.

MBSR: Mindfulness-Primarily based Stress Discount. Eight-week programme in mindfulness designed primarily to scale back stress. Created by John Kabat-Zinn on the Stress Discount Clinic. My eight-week Important Mindfulness programme and my Meditation Tribe courses take inspiration from MBSR.

MBCT: Mindfulness-Primarily based Cognitive Remedy: Extension of ordinary Cognitive Behavioural Remedy programme for victims of recurrent melancholy. Now the UK authorities’s really useful remedy for this problem.

Pure-Killer Cells: White blood cells that deal with contaminated cells and tumour cells. Play vital position in suppressing viruses and cancerous cells.

PFC: Pre-Frontal Cortex. Space of the mind containing networks chargeable for feelings, emotional resilience, perspective taking, impulse management, stress administration, long-term planning, and gratification delay. Concerned in each side of consideration. Deeply linked to the limbic system, and may downregulate feelings by way of it.

Stress Hardiness: Time period coined by Dr. Suzanne Kobasa. Explains why totally different individuals deal with comparable stress ranges otherwise. Stress-hardy individuals exhibit excessive ranges of management, dedication and problem, and see new conditions as alternatives moderately than threats.

Sense of Coherence: Idea from Dr. Aaron Antonovsky that explains why we are able to deal with excessive stress. Characterised by three parts: means to make sense of interior and outer expertise, sense of getting means to handle calls for on us, and perception that these calls for are significant and worthy of dedication.

The Science Behind Meditation and Newbies

At the beginning of contemplative follow, little or nothing appears to alter in us. After continued follow, we discover some modifications in our approach of being, however they arrive and go. Lastly, as follow stabilizes, the modifications are fixed and enduring, with no fluctuation. They’re altered traits.

Richie Davidson and Daniel Goleman

Topics in meditation research span a spread of ranges from freshmen to long-term practitioners to yogis. These classes are decided by variety of lifetime hours of follow and time spent on retreat.

Since we’re specializing in freshmen on this article, let’s make it clear what we imply by a newbie meditator.

In these research, a newbie is outlined as someone who has meditated for beneath 100 hours in complete (100 hours is half-hour a day for 6-7 months), and as few as 7 hours (half-hour a day for 2 weeks). The overwhelming majority of Western meditators fall into this class, they usually are likely to follow mindfulness.

You possibly can examine a newbie with a long-term meditator, who has 1000 to 10,000 hours of follow, and a yogi-level practitioner, who has racked up much more, to higher grasp what being a newbie means.

Although 100 hours of meditation isn’t a lot, there’s gold-standard science behind meditation at this stage, and it reveals a swathe of advantages and results.

And there’s extra excellent news – as we follow extra, these advantages strengthen, new advantages seem, and we begin to expertise everlasting modifications.

Nonetheless, using lively management teams has revealed that the optimistic expectations of freshmen are behind lots of the advantages they expertise. That’s to say, a type of placebo impact takes place within the early phases.

One other caveat is that the results gained’t final with out follow. As per the above quote, the results solely stabilise in long-term practitioners and turn out to be everlasting in adepts.

However don’t fear – we take a look at high-quality research, the place the “placebo impact” of meditation is made null. That approach we are able to see what meditation actually does past what we predict it does.

Let’s get to the science behind meditation, beginning with the physiological results.

The Science Behind Meditation: Physiological Results

The Leisure Response

Many individuals come to meditation to expertise rest, aid from the stresses of life, or to really feel higher. Although meditation doesn’t assure you’ll really feel a sure approach or by no means have a nasty day, I can undoubtedly say that it transforms the way you relate to life’s challenges. That is the place the Leisure Response is available in.

The Leisure Response is a state of low arousal, diminished blood stress and decrease oxygen consumption. You possibly can consider it as the other of the fight-or-flight mode, our in-built animal response to perceived threats. We stay cool and centred within the midst of chaos.

At Harvard within the Seventies, Dr Herbert Benson proved that Transcendental Meditation induces the Leisure Response, and he coined the time period for it. He additionally observed that contemplative traditions all have a approach of manufacturing this response in practitioners.

With meditation coaching, the Leisure Response can turn out to be a house for us, it doesn’t matter what is occuring on the time. We don’t have to be sitting quietly.

Blood Strain

Dovetailing properly with Benson’s work, let’s look briefly at a well-designed examine on African-American males who have been affected by kidney illness. Notice that African-People are significantly susceptible to hypertension and cardiac illness.

Simply 14 minutes of mindfulness follow lowered the metabolic patterns that result in these illnesses. That is proof of modifications in blood stress amongst a bunch of full newbies.

Psoriasis

Meditation has additionally been discovered to assist alleviate the frequent pores and skin situation referred to as psoriasis, which leaves the pores and skin dry and flaky.

In response to the 2019 World Psoriasis survey, 1.7% of the UK inhabitants and 1.4% of high-income North America endure from it.

There are a number of potential causes of psoriasis, together with genetics and way of life components, like smoking, alcohol and stress. It additionally fluctuates based on a number of components, together with emotional wellbeing.

In a 1998 examine, psioriasis cleared 4 instances extra shortly in victims who practiced a mix of visualising and mindfulness whereas receiving therapy than it did within the management group. The meditating group solely did these workouts throughout therapy, not at some other time.

Although this psioriasis examine had some design flaws, the outcomes are intriguing. Why did meditating throughout therapy assist to alleviate a pores and skin situation? What does this inform us concerning the causes of psoriasis? May mindfulness assist alleviate different psychosomatic diseases?

Immune Response

Meditation has additionally been proven to strengthen the immune system, which protects the physique towards dangerous antibodies to forestall illness and sickness. Pure-killer cells play a key position in immune response.

And the immune system is affected by our wellbeing. Pure-killer exercise drops throughout demanding life conditions, together with exams, loneliness, separation, divorce, and caring for family members, decreasing our resistance to illness.

Right here’s the place meditation is available in. Staff in a high-stress company setting who took an eight-week mindfulness course confirmed a lot greater antibody response to a flu jab than controls on a ready listing. This response correlated with the extent of exercise of their prefrontal cortices.

These physiological modifications are intriguing, and I’m excited to see what additional analysis will unearth.

online mindfulness meditation beginners courseonline mindfulness meditation beginners course

Grasp The Necessities of Mindfulness Meditation and Construct a Stable Basis in Non secular Follow

The web Mindfulness Meditation For Newbies Course provides you 20+ classes filled with methods, recommendation and discoveries.

It is a six-week journey into crucial mindfulness methods and a profound exploration of your self.

The Science Behind Meditation: Consideration

Let’s flip our consideration to… consideration itself. That is the important thing to virtually all meditation – in it we prepare a number of core consideration expertise.

That is no shock. For millennia, subtle meditation techniques the world over have documented the systematic coaching of consideration via meditation. In all honesty, trendy science is late to the get together.

I’ve written a complete article on tips on how to use meditation to coach the core consideration expertise, so verify that out for sensible strategies.

Many a whole lot of consideration research have been performed on mindfulness programmes, and unsurprisingly they’ve discovered a particular hyperlink between mindfulness and a focus.

The one caveat is that these enhancements in consideration require continuous follow to keep up. But when we do, the results are dramatic and life-altering, as research on superior yogis reveal.

Selective Consideration

Our senses frequently give us enter within the type of sights, sounds, emotions, tastes and smells. If we have been to be equally conscious of all enter always, we’d shortly turn out to be overwhelmed.

That is the place selective consideration is available in. It permits us to tune out irrelevant inputs and give attention to the related ones. It permits us to learn our e-book in a crowded cafe, stay targeted on our work in an workplace, and cross the street safely by specializing in the subsequent automobile that’s approaching, moderately than the whole lot else round us.

We naturally prepare selective consideration in meditation. To carry our consideration to an object of focus, such because the breath, our physique or our ideas, we have now to deliver it to the forefront of our consideration and preserve it there whereas we obtain different enter. It is a primary function of most meditation practices.

So it’s no shock that we have now scientific proof for meditation’s optimistic impact on selective consideration.

The neural circuitry for selective consideration… may be skilled—opposite to the usual knowledge the place consideration was assumed to be hardwired and so, past the attain of any coaching try.

Richie Davidson and Daniel Goleman

Amishi Jha, a pacesetter within the discipline of contemplative neuroscience, did a rigorous examine of how meditation impacts consideration. She discovered that novices skilled in mindfulness confirmed considerably greater orienting, a key element of selective consideration.

And a analysis group at MIT used MEG to point out the eye beneficial properties of members in an eight-week mindfulness programme. They’d a considerably greater means to give attention to particular physique sensations: their expertise had each improved over the course of the programme, and now trumped these of the management group.

Purpose Focus or Cognitive Management

Purpose focus, AKA cognitive management, is the power to give attention to particular aim and maintain it in thoughts whereas resisting distractions. It’s just like selective consideration, and is the other of the state we enter throughout multitasking.

In a single examine, volunteer undergrads did both three 10-minute periods of breath counting or spent the time scrolling via web websites.

Those that meditated confirmed important will increase in consideration expertise on a spread of exams, and the heavy multitaskers skilled the largest beneficial properties.

Although this was a brief change, it helps us see that even brief doses of meditation produce measurable modifications.

Attentional Blink

For a very long time, the attentional blink was thought of to be hardwired. However research on meditators have proven us in any other case.

The attentional blink tends to get longer with age, however open-monitoring meditation, which entails shifting our consideration between varied objects of focus, has been proven to scale back this impact.

What’s extra, non permanent reductions within the attentional blink happen after solely 17 minutes of open-monitoring follow.

Vigilance: Sustaining Consideration Over Time

And at last, we come to what many people name consideration: the power to keep up give attention to a selected sensory enter over time. The technical time period for this consideration talent is vigilance, and we’d name its reverse mind-wandering. Unsurprisingly, meditation improves this in freshmen too.

Researchers on the College of California had volunteers meditate on their breath for eight minutes and located this diminished how a lot their thoughts wandered in a while, in comparison with controls who learn a newspaper or relaxed.

These researchers additionally did a six-hour mindfulness programme with college students, together with 10-minute periods at house. This improved focus and lessened mind-wandering, in comparison with a management group who studied diet as an alternative.

And we’ve discovered a neurological correlate for these results in freshmen.

By measuring mind exercise utilizing fMRI, researchers on the College of Toronto discovered that members in an eight-week mindfulness programme exhibited mind signatures of larger presence, decrease mind-wandering and diminished self-narration.

To make sure, meditating for eight minutes to some dozen hours gained’t deliver everlasting consideration modifications, nevertheless it’s encouraging that brief doses quickly increase so many aspects of consideration, and it begs the query of how consideration modifications in long-term and yogi-level meditators.

Meditation trains different consideration expertise too, however for now let’s transfer to the psychological aspect.

The Science Behind Meditation: Managing Misery

That is the largest class on this article, and although the phrase misery sounds medical and miserable, all of us expertise it. If not beneath excessive misery, we are able to nonetheless use the abilities of meditation to assist us via tough durations, emotional storms and instances of sickness.

Meditation has confirmed to be efficient in managing stress, melancholy, nervousness, ache and loneliness. MBCT is now the UK authorities’s really useful therapy for sufferers who expertise a number of bouts of melancholy. And The Nationwide Institutes of Well being in America pump a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into mindfulness analysis yearly.

My hunch: I wish to assume that meditation retrains us our stress circuitry. We turn out to be extra immune to it, expertise it in a basically totally different approach, and cease unnecessarily creating it.

Relaxation assured, meditation is a strong antidote to misery, and we are able to all construct our expertise now for once we want them later.

Emotional Regulation

My expertise: On multiple event I’ve been advised I’m very “zen” and that I normally appear calm and picked up. Although I do expertise tough feelings, I can undoubtedly say that I’m now significantly better outfitted to deal with them than I ever was. This inevitably interprets into my behaviour.

And neurological modifications present in newbie meditators again this up.

Researchers from Harvard Medical Faculty and Massachussets Normal Hospital discovered thickened gray matter in areas of mind associated to emotional regulation and self-sense in members of an eight-week mindfulness programme.

In addition they discovered a thinning of the amygdala, and the diploma of thinning correlated with scores on a perceived stress scale.

In one other examine, on the College of Wisconsin, burdened company staff who accomplished an analogous programme exhibited neurological indicators of improved emotional intelligence and regulation, when in comparison with waiting-list controls. This continued for 4 months after the programme.

If you wish to be extra “zen”, perhaps mindfulness is what you want.

Stress

We shouldn’t be stunned that meditation positively impacts our ranges of stress. That is virtually frequent information. What we’d fail to grasp is the scope of the science behind meditation and the truth that optimistic outcomes have been repeatedly present in freshmen.

There’s anecdotal, physiological and neurological proof for the stress-reducing energy of meditation on freshmen.

Let’s take a look at a number of the very best science behind meditation for treating stress:

  • Job-seekers given three days of intensive mindfulness coaching confirmed lower in a key cytokine. The larger the rise in connectivity between the DMN and PFC, the larger the reductions within the cytokine.
  • College students in an eight-week mindfulness programme at Stanford College reported feeling much less anxious. Exercise elevated of their neurological consideration circuits, they usually confirmed diminished amygdala exercise when listening to emotionally charged sentences.
  • In lab-controlled stress check on the College of Wisconsin, the dimensions of blisters induced in wholesome mindfulness college students have been lower than rigorously matched lively controls.
  • A small-but-significant improve in stress hardiness and sense of coherence has been repeatedly present in members of eight-week mindfulness programmes. In follow-ups as much as three years after the programme, ranges are maintained or elevated. The researchers who initially coined the phrases thought of these to be mounted traits.

Melancholy

As you’ve seen within the glossary, there’s a scientific mindfulness programme that’s particularly designed for individuals with repeated bouts of melancholy. It’s referred to as Mindfulness-Primarily based Cognitive Remedy, and it’s now the UK authorities’s really useful therapy for such sufferers. Let’s see why.

Although many research carried out on MBCT don’t meet the gold customary required for scientific reserach, a metastudy at John Hopkins College analysed 47 research on meditation – the three% of all research with top-quality design. Sufferers in these research suffered from a spread illnesses together with melancholy, ache, sleep issues and well being issues.

The researchers concluded that mindfulness is efficient towards nervousness, melancholy and ache, and located that mindfulness is as efficient as medicine however with out the side-effects.

In one other examine at Oxford College, 300 college students with extreme, medication-resistant melancholy have been randomly assigned to an lively group and a management group.

The lively group obtained a primary MBCT course, whereas the controls obtained customary psychiatric therapy. They have been then tracked for six months.

MBCT proved to be as efficient because the psychiatric therapy and, for sufferers with childhood trauma, more practical.

Is there a neurological foundation for this? You guess. It appears that evidently the insula performs a job.

In one other examine, fMRI was used to match sufferers who had beforehand recovered from extreme melancholy. Some did MBCT, whereas others did customary CBT, or Cognitive Behavioural Remedy. The sufferers who confirmed the best improve in insula exercise after therapy additionally had 35% fewer relapses.

And on an important sensible word – the largest enhancements have been present in sufferers who have been in a position to step exterior their ideas and emotions. And the extra time they put into mindfulness follow, the decrease their odds of relapse.

Anxiousness

In a collaboration between the Stress Discount Clinic and Division of Psychiatryat UMass, 22 sufferers with a secondary prognosis of Generalised Anxiousness Dysfunction and/or panic dysfunction went via an eight-week mindfulness programme.

The outcomes have been exceptional.

Melancholy and nervousness dropped in practically all members, as did the frequency and severity of their panic assaults. In a three-month follow-up, that they had maintained the advance and have been principally freed from panic assaults. They usually saved it up – after three years, most nonetheless practiced meditation.

There’s one caveat – there was no randomised management group. However these sufferers have been handled identical as all different course members to scale back expectation results, the instructors have been unaware of the examine, and didn’t know of the sufferers’ diagnoses.

Ache

Analysis on long-term meditators exhibits that a lot of our perceived ache is a results of how we expertise painful sensations in our physique. Ache will not be a given.

There’s additionally proof that transient coaching in mindfulness can dramatically scale back rankings of discomfort and ache depth and produce neurological modifications.

Mindfulness is very efficient in aged individuals affected by individuals. It reduces their perceived stage of ache, which in flip reduces their stage of incapacity.

A meta-analysis on dozens of research led Dutch researchers to concluding that mindfulness is an efficient different to medical therapies for ache. The opposite advantages are that you simply be taught precious expertise you possibly can apply to different areas of life, you possibly can’t get addicted, and there are normally no side-effects.

Decreased stress and subjective signs have additionally been discovered amongst fibromyalgia sufferers who obtained mindfulness therapy, with these results rising with hours of follow.

Although we’d not endure persistent ache, we are able to all use mindfulness to higher course of our on a regular basis bodily and emotional ache, thus releasing ourselves from it.

The Science Behind Meditation: Lovingkindness & Compassion

Lastly, let’s take a look at the exceptional analysis into lovingkindness and compassion practices.

On this context, lovingkindness means wishing that others be comfortable, and compassion means wishing that others be relieved of struggling.

Lovingkindness is a basic Buddhist follow. It makes use of visualising and sentences resembling “Might you be comfortable”and “Might you be freed from struggling” to induce compassion. Related practices seem in lots of different non secular traditions.

And intriguingly, trendy analysis means that it’s simpler to make use of meditation to spice up compassion than different traits.

It is a number of the analysis on these practices:

  • Research with freshmen in lovingkindness meditation present heightened amygdala response to photographs of ache and struggling. One examine discovered that after solely seven minutes of lovingkindness meditation, there’s a brief increase in social connection and optimistic emotions.
  • Members in a three-day intensive lovingkindness coaching confirmed elevated connection between management circuits within the PFC and the Posterior Cingulate Cortex.
  • Researchers on the College of Carolina have proven that 9 weeks of follow in lovingkindness meditation will increase sense of objective and reduces sickness.
  • Coaching in mindfulness over eight weeks was as efficient at inducing compassion as compassion coaching. Members have been 5 instances extra prone to help somebody in want than waiting-list controls.

Takeaways

The principle aim of this text is to encourage beginner meditators to follow. Meditation is hard, significantly within the early days. It’s reassuring to know that modifications are seemingly already going down throughout your very first experiences.

Once you examine the science behind meditation, give attention to the findings that resonate with you and are aligned together with your motivation for meditating. Achieve encouragement from these research and use them as gasoline for the journey.

And at last, you’ll have good days and dangerous days in meditation, and the dangerous days aren’t an indication that you simply’re failing or not experiencing beneficial properties. Keep on the trail and maintain training diligently. The additional you stroll, the larger the advantages.

The science behind meditation in beginners. Physiological, attentional and distress-related.The science behind meditation in beginners. Physiological, attentional and distress-related.
online mindfulness meditation beginners courseonline mindfulness meditation beginners course

Grasp The Necessities of Mindfulness Meditation and Construct a Stable Basis in Non secular Follow

The web Mindfulness Meditation For Newbies Course provides you 20+ classes filled with methods, recommendation and discoveries.

It is a six-week journey into crucial mindfulness methods and a profound exploration of your self.

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