> [!summary] Progressive Summary # Structured Notes ## Definitions ## Chapter Summaries ### Chapter 1 - How Trauma Sticks The hippocampus in the limbic brain is like a one-day scratch pad. It stores memories temporarily, and cannot distinguish between something happening yesterday, or a month ago. At night, the hippocampus passes the information to the rest of the brain for processing and storing into long-term memory. This is the phase during which dreaming occurs. When the hippocampus contains information that is too overwhelming for the rest of the brain to process, we get nightmares. When the experience still isn't processed, it gets repressed in the subconscious, or it gets thrown back into the hippocampus the next day. When the latter happens, the trauma is always front and center, in its raw form, and affects the person on a daily basis. Brain scans show that the hippocampus and amygdala don't function well until the trauma is processed. A key concept is that the brain is well resourced when every part of the brain has access to every other part. When painful memories are buried in the amygdala and hippocampus, they lose their connection with positive memories stored in distant parts of the brain. During bilateral therapy, the hippocampus is activated, whilst the right and left hemispheres of the brain take turns processing what is in the hippocampus. ### Chapter 2 - Discovering the History of Bilateral Therapies In the late 1700s, Franz Anton Mesmer, an Austrian physician who lived in France, developed a method of curing patients by passing his hand back and forth in front of them, whilst they kept their heads still and followed with their eyes. He successfully cured many ailments that manifested as lack of vigor, or a weakness in animal spirit. He became well known for this method. The medical establishment, including Benjamin Franklin, were threatened by his work, and released a report on August 11, 1784 that debunked it. Mesmer's reputation sufferend, and he retired to his home in the countryside, living there until his death in 1815. Mesmer thought that his cure worked because of magnetism. He often used lodestones in his cures, and believed that his hands exerted a magnetic force on his patients. In November 1841, a French magnetizer named Dr Charles Lafontaine gave a series of lectures in England. A Scotsman named James Braid was among the audience. Brain became fascinated by this cure, and conducted his own experiments. He concluded that the cure had nothing to do with magnetism, and more to do with the movement of the eyes. He had swapped a swinging pocket watch for the hands, and found that the patients still went into a trance. Whilst Braid put mesmerism on a more scientific footing, others took the more esoteric elements and started new movements such as Theosophy and Christian Science. ### Chapter 3 - Why Bilaterality is So Important Left-hemisphere dominant cultures (civilisations) are more violent. In 1982, Walter Ong published *Orality and Literacy*. He had a theory that brains developed very differently in oral and literate cultures. In 1999, Leonard Shlain expanded on this theory with his book *The Alphabet Versus the Goddess"*, saying that literacy promoted left-hemisphere dominance. Alphabets are abstract symbols, and it is the left hemisphere which handles logical and abstract thinking. Learning to read before the age of seven creates an imbalance in the hemispheres. Shlain suggested that left-brain dominance disconnects us from the more empathic right-brain, and that this makes us more willing to use violence. He noted that violence against women and goddess cults coincided with waves of literacy. ### Chapter 4 - NLP and the Modern History of Bilateral Therapies # Quotes > They are the ‘herb tea’ of therapy: easily administered, and of immense value. I would choose this over traditional therapy in a second.”