The Divided Brain

The psychiatrist Iain McGilcrist published a book back in 2009 called The Master and His Emissary all about what our left brain and right brain really do.

Because it's quite complicated Fiona thought it would be nice to try and make it understandable for all of us, and to see how it explains why hypnotherapy can be so useful.

https://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain

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Transcript

Richard: 0:10

Good day to you. You absolute beauty. Welcome to Therapy Natters, the podcast series where myself, Richard Nicholls, and fellow psychotherapist, Fiona Biddle, answer questions or natter about something to do with psychotherapy. Whether you even think you'd benefit from therapy or not. Spoiler. Yeah, you would everybody would, and if you don't believe that, then uh, you're clearly in denial, which means you need even more therapy than you thought you did in the first place. I'm exaggerating for effect Fiona but there's some truth in that I think

Fiona: 0:45

Oh, actually, I think there's rather a lot of truth in that. Yes. I do agree. But also, I mean, we are not just pushing therapy and saying you need it, whoever you are. We are also, I hope, well, for me, I'm sure both of us we're wanting to introduce psychotherapeutic ideas that people can just listen to and go, oh. And maybe they have an effect without having to go to a therapist

Richard: 1:15

I'm all about the psych of education think that's actually a bigger part of Therapy than people think. At least it is in my therapy room. I do quite a lot of psychoeducation sort of teaching people about theories, but in a very appropriate way. Some people don't need to hear any of it at all. not in the slightest. They just need to talk about the problems that they've got and hear me say This makes sense rather than this makes sense and this is why according to the theories

Fiona: 1:47

it so depends on the person, and I mean, I, I know of therapists who say you should never talk about the theory, and others who say you should always talk about the theory. Uh, And as usual,

Richard: 2:02

sorry You're both wrong

Fiona: 2:04

as usual, we end up somewhere in the middle. At this time, we're not sitting on a fence. We just come down on different sides of the fence, depending on the person who's there with us and their, their situation. Some people really want to know and are very, very interested and for others it's just doesn't seem relevant So We go, with that

Richard: 2:28

and that's gonna be the same, not just for therapy, but for everything like these podcast episodes, there are gonna be some that people will skip. We did an episode about psychoanalysis last week. We did one the week before that or the one week before that. Before that, about couples counselling. Really interesting subjects. Some people are gonna skip those because they're not interested. And yet actually until you listen to it, you don't know how relevant those ideas might be in your life to help you understand not just yourself better, but everybody around you as well. And today's episode is gonna be one of those I think that I think

Fiona: 3:08

I

Richard: 3:09

can listen to and go, didn't even know that this existed but it's really interesting

Fiona: 3:16

I think the majority of people will have some idea of the starting point of today's, but where we're going to start from is to say that what people tend to think

Richard: 3:29

Is wrong

Fiona: 3:30

isn't right

Richard: 3:32

Yeah.

Fiona: 3:32

What we, we're going to attempt to talk about today is to, look at the work of, a psychiatrist called Ian McGilchrist, who wrote a book called The Master and his Emissary basically about the two hemispheres of the brain and how they differ and how they work together, in an ideal world. It is a very heavy tome literally and figuratively. He has written a follow-up book called The Matter With Things, which is so big, it's in two volumes. And it's very good for flattening things that have got creased.

Richard: 4:15

So if you're gonna buy a copy of Iain Mcgilchrist's work, and you wanna take it on holiday with you best buy it in epub Kindle format

Fiona: 4:23

One of my supervisees I spoke to and he was on holiday and he said, I've just started reading the matter with things And I said, oh, I'm reading Richard Osman when I'm on holiday.

Richard: 4:34

Yeah me too actually, And did

Fiona: 4:38

Yes Good. They're good, aren't they?

Richard: 4:40

Oh yeah I'm loving the loving His recent one. They're only halfway through.

Fiona: 4:43

Oh

Richard: 4:44

cause I

Fiona: 4:44

I've done number three That was what I read

Richard: 4:47

lovely.

Fiona: 4:48

last time Yes.

Richard: 4:49

like him to be my friend Hey Richard please be my friend

Fiona: 4:51

Yes,

Richard: 4:52

lovely wife who was in Doctor Who she's great

Fiona: 4:55

Absolutely. it's like lying in a warm bath with a glass of wine to read those books. It's just lovely. Not to everybody's taste Anyway, we really have gone off on a tangent.

Richard: 5:08

sorry

Fiona: 5:09

Okay, so we we're talking about the master in his Emissary by Ian McGilchrist. Lots of people have said, people I know reviews, et cetera, that it's really changed their lives to read this book. The book itself is divided into two parts. The first is the, the science really of the brain and what the two hemispheres do with lots of Examples that they've found through people who've got brain injuries, if half of your brain is wiped out then you know what it does because of what you can't do

Richard: 5:46

Sadly, that's how a lot work is done. We can't ethically start taking out parts of people's brains to go, oh this is the part for numbers Oh that makes sense. We've gotta wait for somebody to have a stroke

Fiona: 5:57

They can do little bits with um, numbing bits. Yes, they can. they can. they can do some, but not an awful lot. But the second part, just as explain what the second part is, the the idea of the title the Master and his Emissary as I said earlier, most of us have some idea because it has been in popular culture for, for years and years and years.

Richard: 6:21

be a left-brained person or a right-brained person

Fiona: 6:23

Yeah. And, and the right brain is the creative one, and the left brain is the logical. And maths is in the left brain and art is in the right and.

Richard: 6:32

Yes of course

Fiona: 6:32

Those sorts of ideas. So let's just start there In terms of the title of the book, McgGilchrist's idea is that the right brain should be and actually is the master and the left brain should do what the right brain asks it to do. I was very careful there I think my, my brain made sure I said asks not tell.

Richard: 7:00

Yeah

Fiona: 7:01

Uh, that was in, in my brain. I'm not quite sure where. But that was asks it to do. But in the western world, and he goes back to ancient Greece and Rome. And from then that the left brain has dominated And so it's the emissary taking over and doing what it thinks is right rather than what the master has told it to do.

Richard: 7:29

Hmm

Fiona: 7:29

So that's the, the basis of the book, the second part being his explanation of why he thinks that this is what has happened in the Western world and why it's a problem and why it is still a problem now. We are not going to get into that side of things here for a start. We've only got half an hour. And also that's a sort of sociological issue, not a psychological issue. We we talk about individuals and relationships between individuals, so, but just to know that's where the title comes from and that's what the book's about. So we are talking about the first half of the book. So we're going back again to this idea of what popular culture has said and Mcgilchrist says, It's wrong because both halves do everything So you need both halves for reason. You need both halves for imagination. But they do these things in different ways. Perhaps just as a way of starting this off with something that people will I'm sure be able to understand even if they didn't know it,'cause I certainly didn't know it when I read the book. If you think of a bird just an ordinary common British garden bird that's pecking away amongst gravel to find little bugs to eat. That bird will be using its left brain to focus in on finding those little edible bits within the gravel. So it's very highly focused to find those.

Richard: 9:08

Yeah Especially if it's looking for seeds'cause they look like stones

Fiona: 9:12

yes yes, And the right brain is looking at everything else. So typically it'll be looking for predators. So to see if there's a cat nearby and they've done experiments with, blocking off the eyes of birds so they can see that, very clearly that that is what they, are doing So they, know that that's very clearly what is happening. So let me go through a list of typical things that the two halves focus on. Probably isn't the right word.'cause that's what the left does. Focus

Richard: 9:48

Oh yeah Yeah

Fiona: 9:49

the, the left brain, and there's lots of these, so you might want to go through them slowly when you rewind the left categorizes, it's responsible for fine motor control. It's detail orientated functionary, mechanistic. It looks for prey. It closes down to certainty, doesn't like uncertainty, wants everything to be explicit. So it's making implicit things explicit. It's abstractive, impersonal, competitive. It promotes rivalry. It holds individual self-belief, whether positive or negative language, sorry, not language. It speaks the left is the part that speaks language is in both. Self referring, theoretical, anger is the only emotion that's in the left. It likes things that are known that are fixed, divides things into parts. Likes black and white thinking. And a couple of really lovely ones. It doesn't like responsibility and will deny involvement in anything that reveals a weakness and evidence of being wrong tends to strengthen the belief that it's right. Now, as I say, those two, uh, You know, I'm, I, I, I'm, I'm smiling as I say. Well, everybody does it, don't they? To an extent. It's a question of the extent that you do it, so that's, that's the left. And one of the sort of summaries is it's not alive. And so then the right, remember the left was part orientated divided things into parts. The right is whole orientated. It has an immediate relationship with physical bodies through the senses. Looks for predators. It's exploratory, opens up to possibility, holds contexts It's personal. Self-awareness is within the right hemisphere. Empathy is there too. Identification with others. Inter-subjective processes. Any emotion other than anger is in the right hemisphere. Bonding. Has language but not speech. As I said it's open to nature and experiences alive and present. It likes new things. It's looking for differences It's flow and shades of gray. Now, if you think back to that bird that has one half looking for the seeds amongst the gravel and the other part looking for predators that's quite simple because, well, it's a bird. Humans have more to their brains than that. So without getting technical, because I can't, I have to distill it down, which is a left brain function. We have our frontal lobes and the frontal lobes, their job is to inhibit, and by inhibit I mean it says Stop

Richard: 12:57

Okay

Fiona: 12:58

stopping. Immediate responses. Immediate action. So we can step back. The bird doesn't have the ability to step back and look at the whole world and think, Hmm, maybe I've had enough seed for today. Maybe I should go and sit on the nest for a bit now. it doesn't have the bit that says Stop and have a think and a look, So we have the opportunity to stand back, and that gives us the opportunity not only to analyze our world, but other people's world so we can understand other people because of that inhibitory function. So we don't immediately get angry and, and hit somebody. We We have that function in the middle that stops us immediately

Richard: 13:49

And without the executive function that the frontal lobes provide If if the frontal lobes go offline for some reason because we are overly emotional, then it's not inhibiting those urges to lash out

Fiona: 14:01

Yeah because we can then empathize and see the bigger picture for ourself and the impact of what an action might be. But we can see the impact on somebody else because empathy is sort of saying I can see that they are like me.

Richard: 14:18

Hmm

Fiona: 14:19

But what this also means then is that the left brain is manipulative, which is a word that's used in our language as a negative, but it doesn't have to be because we are manipulating the world around us all the time. If we grow potatoes, we are manipulating the world to feed us.

Richard: 14:43

Yeah

Fiona: 14:44

So we have the ability to make things grow food. But also there is then the other side of the empathy is that there is the ability to manipulate other people. But that's not always a bad thing either. A boss is manipulating their workforce by asking them to do particular tasks

Richard: 15:04

Well, yeah, we are manipulating each other all the time. Sometimes that's for deliberately selfish reasons. Yeah. I'll make this nice meal for my girlfriend and it'll mean that she'll put out for me, you know, Whereas when you've been married 27 years, you just want a nice meal. Actually, I've only been married 20 years, but we were together for seven years before that...But no, I like a nice meal because it's nice to give my wife a nice meal. Not not for any manipulative reasons, but

Fiona: 15:40

it's still, it's still

Richard: 15:41

I'm yeah I'm trying to manipulate

Fiona: 15:43

it is you, you are making her happy. I had my brother to stay last weekend and he really enjoyed the meals that I made him. I was so happy. I felt really good. And, I made a, a present for Nazar, my Ukrainian boy, and he loved it and I felt so good, but technically I'd manipulated because I'd made him feel good and I made myself feel good because he felt good But that's I think good

Richard: 16:14

Well, yeah,'cause you're doing it for the right reasons. If those are trying to manipulate the external world, because that's the only way that they can feel good. And without that they feel bad Then Yeah. there's there's something to look at there

Fiona: 16:27

Yeah. So I think it's, about being clear with language, and we'll come onto language in a bit, but just to finish the the general premise of the, whole idea. I mentioned briefly, but I want to say it again. The right is always looking for exceptions. We've talked about, I'm sure we've talked about before, that the vast majority of things that we see and hear and experience are agreeing with our previous model of the

Richard: 16:52

Yeah. we have a cognitive bias don't we to look for things that we already believe

Fiona: 16:57

but the Right, yeah. The right is always keeping an eye out for exceptions because exceptions then you, you, really need to do something if you know it's actually in the middle of the night, last night I heard a very strange noise and that was the right brain perceiving that's not normal. And then what it does is it hands it over to the left brain. Funny'cause I should have been aware of this at the time given we were talking about this, but I wasn't. But this is what happened'cause I know the process, it hands it over to the left brain to categorize it, to put that into a box because the left brain needs to have it in a box And the box that my left brain put it in was, I think the printer's doing some sort of calibration. They do sometimes, don't they printers, they some sometimes do something completely random. Now I've no idea if that's what it was'cause it was a very quick short noise that I've no other way to do it. But, so my left brain was happy to put it in that box.

Richard: 18:07

it categorized it as unusual but safe

Fiona: 18:09

yes, this is okay. It's not a burglar. And then it sends that back, to the right brain as a representation. And the final thing before we look at some other bits is that the right brain is never completely knowable. It doesn't have speech, it does have some language and it very much likes metaphors, I should imagine that some of our listeners are saying yeah, and so?

Richard: 18:39

Yeah How is this appropriate What are you talking about telling me about this for Yeah

Fiona: 18:43

so what, what's, what's the point of all this? The point is, well, several points. One is that perhaps we could encourage our left brains to listen to the right more and to allow the right more say even though it doesn't speak

Richard: 19:01

And how do We do that We do that by giving it permission by quietening the mind

Fiona: 19:07

Yep. Yeah. I mean, I, I do quite regularly simply ask, I mean, this is when I would usually use the terms conscious and unconscious and, and for a while it all subconscious, I tend to use For a while it was fashionable to say that the left brain was the conscious and the right brain was the unconscious or subconscious, and then that went outta fashion. But it sort of comes back in this context that if the left brain is the bit that speaks, you do need to listen in a different way to the right brain. I will quite often in my own life ask my subconscious, what do you think about that? And what I get is usually feelings or pictures that the left then decodes into words

Richard: 20:02

Right. Okay Now to do that as a hypnotherapist to me it's about practicing hypnosis.

Fiona: 20:11

Yes

Richard: 20:12

'cause you've been doing that for what 25 years plus 30

Fiona: 20:17

been in p I've been in practice for 30 years and I was using hypnosis, via tapes from Dick Sutphen for probably three or four years before that So long time I've been doing hypnosis in one way or another

Richard: 20:31

So you, you can communicate with your unconscious slash subconscious quite easily'cause you've been doing it a lot. our listeners if they want to would gain a lot of benefit from practicing hypnosis.

Fiona: 20:45

and it's not difficult No it's not. When I first got involved in hypnosis, I thought it was something more magical, and mysterious than it was because we wanted it wanted be we wanted it and It's It's it's made out to be It was'cause, yeah, the stage, the stage hypnotists of getting volunteers up to play, act, and improvise, which is just amateur dramatics.

Richard: 21:10

It's just people having a laugh. Hypnosis can help people feel a little bit more relaxed, and the stage is the perfect place to show off if you ever want to. So if you ask the volunteers, the only people that are gonna get up are those that wanna show off in front of their friends

Fiona: 21:22

And they wouldn't tell. Well, some, some of them would never be able to do otherwise. So it's, it's their only opportunity to do it. Then also you've got the compliance factor.

Richard: 21:33

Yeah

Fiona: 21:34

People don't want to show up the person on the stage

Richard: 21:38

Especially if, especially if the hypnotist says things like, I can tell that because you're quite an intelligent person that you're gonna be very good at this. Things like that. It's quite manipulative But of course it's just, it's what you do and. That did plant a seed in my mind that says that hypnosis was more complicated than it actually was because look it can make that man think he's in love with a mop. But actually, no, no, it can't make anybody think they're in love with a mop But what it can do, is give you permission to get out of your own way and do the things that you want to do. And get more in touch with what all parts of you want and need. But it means listening to that I dunno, any Other way of doing it apart from with hypnosis, I mean we can call it meditation. A lot of people will use Meditation and hypnosis fairly interchangeably. And there probably are some differences biologically but it's the same far as we are doesn't,

Fiona: 22:40

it doesn't bother me. The differences. I mean, there are, there are other ways for example you could Have a stream of consciousness writing could, yeah, you could Journaling yeah, Yeah Yeah Sort of say to your subconscious draw a picture that that doesn't have to be a picture. Draw something that represents how you feel about this particular thing.

Richard: 23:06

Like the Rorschach Ink block tests,

Fiona: 23:09

Yes

Richard: 23:09

which I dunno why they always, they're nonsense. They are'cause it's just always a picture of my dad, shouting Why did they why did they do that nonsense

Fiona: 23:21

Well, I don't I dunno I think you might have just contradicted yourself'cause

Richard: 23:25

I'm joking.

Fiona: 23:27

Oh I see Sorry

Richard: 23:29

My dad wasn't a shouter from what I remember

Fiona: 23:32

Uh, The, the Rorschach Ink block test is, that it gives you the opportunity to say whatever it is that's that's deep down that you wouldn't otherwise say because you, you see it in the, in the picture. I mean, I'm not a, not a huge fan. Never done it. But yeah, there, there, there are ways, but, you know, hypnosis works. It's, it's simple. It's easy, and any hypnotherapist can teach you to do self hypnosis, there's various ways. You could go for one session, learn how to do it, and then practice. it's it's like anything else. If you don't practice it then the skill will Not develop and or fade and that can be as simple as just like you. You learned hypnosis for yourself, just listening to some old tapes, audio tapes, and just going through the instructions. YouTube is full of those things. Us and some colleagues have got a YouTube channel with some things on. There's always a link in the show notes. Go and have a listen to those things on there. Although somebody did message us and say you know, YouTube puts adverts in the middle because that's how YouTube make their money. I'm like, damn.'cause we don't have adverts on there, so we, we, don't earn anything from it. but halfway through it goes eh, and an advert comes on for something and then the hypnosis track starts again. I. Damn you YouTube. But hey, if you subscribe to my newsletter, there's a subscription form on my website You'll get a link to ad free stuff. I'll I'll I'll put a link in the show notes and the the also, I mean, you can listen to an online YouTube audio an a with, with an ad blocker. Oh, I'm not saying you should use an ad blocker. Don't use an ad blocker. I'm not suggesting you should do that. But there's a reason why I know that was putting adverts in the middle of my videos I. think it might be something we need to look at because the ones that I listen to, and I do listen to yours on Bruxism Richard, If I find myself doing that, I can feel that tooth now. if I find myself doing that, I'll listen to you and it stops. The point I was getting to was that it doesn't really matter what they're doing. Once you've got into that state, you can ignore what they're saying or switch it off and stay in that state and have a little chat with your own, two hemispheres of your mind. And also simply, she says, simply, Look at your own life and see whether it's too dominated for you by one side or the other. And

Richard: 26:23

how

Fiona: 26:23

you find that it is, well listen back to, listen back to those uh, the list that I gave earlier of the functions of the two

Richard: 26:34

Being a dichotomous thinker, everything's black or white You're either with me or against me

Fiona: 26:39

Yeah

Richard: 26:40

of attitudes

Fiona: 26:41

if you're finding that, that is dominating over emotion and empathy and creativity and whole world thinking and shades of gray, if you find that that's happening, well, you can do something about it. You can rebalance yourself. You don't want to go to the other extreme'cause extremes are generally not good. But maybe allow some more of that in

Richard: 27:11

Mm-hmm And the opposite would be if somebody's Can you be too open-minded

Fiona: 27:17

I love that phrase of you should be open-minded but not so open-minded

Richard: 27:21

your brain falls out.

Fiona: 27:22

falls out. Yeah. you can be too open-minded. You can be too, globally viewing. You can be Too empathic. You can be too emotional, but what too means in that context needs to be personally defined. It's not for anybody else to say you are too this, too that. But you could be. It's more of a character that's springing to mind, actually from a TV program. But I won't go into that'cause it's not right. But I think you, you could be, it might be a bit caricature, but you have a, have a little think. I mean, somebody who's very very right brained might not get much done.

Richard: 28:04

Mm

Fiona: 28:05

Well, that might be okay, but

Richard: 28:07

Doesn't pay bills

Fiona: 28:09

Yes. If you are in a. situation where you need to go to work and do these tasks in order to get paid In order to pay the bills, then yeah, might not be. But then if you were, oh, do you know, I was just gonna say if you were Michelangelo, but no that's not right because Michelangelo, when he was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, he must have still had a plan. and be very organized as to where his paints were and what was going to go where I'm sure he didn't just start in the corner and work his way across.

Richard: 28:46

in Yeah

Fiona: 28:48

So even sort the, heights of that sort of, that that level of creativity, There still has to be the left brain involvement

Richard: 29:00

Hmm. Otherwise you don't get started. Whether you, whether we were talking about We were talking about Richard Osman and his, and his, and his books. I was reading a chapter yesterday'cause I had a client reschedule and I thought, oh, I've got an hour. I'll sit and read. I read for about 20 minutes and ended up replying to emails instead. But, you know, it is what it is. Nobody just sits there and suddenly they've got a keyboard in front of them and a word processor and go, right. So what am I gonna write about? I'm just gonna let I'm gonna gonna free associate into this and see what comes out. You're gonna get possibly the same equivalent as you would if you've got an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters. Yeah, you wait long enough you've got a book but you're gonna have to wait billions of years. You need a plan first that says, yeah, I've already done a lot of logical work here to know what to do and how to do it, and whether that's about Writing a book, painting a picture, or personal development and changing your life, finding work, making new friends. It doesn't happen by itself. We have to logically think about the steps to make it happen and then embrace how that feels

Fiona: 30:12

there was a bit in, in, in the book where McGilchrist talks about rationality and that we can't prove that being rational is a good thing. We can only intuit that rationality is a good thing, which is using your right brain to say that the left brain's process is a good one, which I rather liked. It's sort of circular. I just wanted to talk a little bit about language. One of his ideas is that all language is metaphorical. And he talks about the start of language, which will have been descriptive of processes. And he uses the idea that when we are doing a task in the fields, so we might grasp the spade to dig the earth. And then that word grasp, which is describing a left brain activity. cause it's the left brain that will say, you need to dig that So use your right hand. Usually left brain tells the right hand. We can't get into the people who are left-handed. But that's really interesting. But we can't get into that now. But then we use that word grasp to also talk about understanding something.

Richard: 31:37

Yes

Fiona: 31:38

And when you reminded me, Richard yesterday when I said shall we talk about this? I said, shall we grasp the nettle?

Richard: 31:47

Yeah

Fiona: 31:48

And I didn't even notice that I'd use that metaphor

Richard: 31:54

For talking about a

Fiona: 31:55

would for talking about a complicated topic. So it's it's absolutely fascinating though. I mean, I would recommend people look at the book or you can find YouTube summaries. There's conversations that Mcgilchrist has with various interviews. There's also one where he's talking with John Cleese that's on YouTube is interesting. And there's a cartoony one that, what's called doodly or something that which we are going to put in the show notes, aren't we A link to that, that the Royal Society of Arts created. And that goes through what we've been talking about if you are interested

Richard: 32:39

Mm-hmm. And I think Like with so many topics, if this is something that you're more interested in than you thought, and this is wet your appetite, go and find out more. Because we've got the world at our fingertips. If you're listening to this podcast, then you've got access to the internet. We need to take advantage of that We get so accustomed to this. It wasn't that long ago when, when I was studying, say, hypnotherapy, back in 2000 I did have access to the internet, and it was that, that gave me the enthusiasm to learn more. But I still had to go and read a lot of books. If we didn't have YouTube, we didn't have blogs. There was a few, but not very many, not like there is now. we genuinely have no excuse to absorb the things that you're interested in and soak it up and make time for it and make time for you, because genuinely to get these two hemispheres talking to each other and understanding yourself better. You need to get outta your own way, and hypnosis, meditation, mindfulness, whatever we want to call it, is genuinely the best way to do that. Like you say, you can get into the right frame of mind first. Then journal and write or talk to somebody in the right circumstances. But even then, you've gotta get into the right mind first. If your foundations are really good at relaxing your conscious thoughts so that things slow down just a little bit. Just softening. The work that you can do there is phenomenal it really is

Fiona: 34:34

I would say also, that's using the specific technique of taking a bit of time to do something. If you can also encourage that relationship between the two sides so that If the right brain suddenly pops up and says, Hey, hang on. That you've got a way of that happening and being able to listen to it. So with the relationship, just the same as the relationship between two people, if one is dominating and the other one says Hey, hang on, it could be just completely ignored.

Richard: 35:11

Yeah

Fiona: 35:11

within the self to allow, the right brain to be able to interrupt the left It's usually that way. round could be the other That's the, going back to the title of the book, In the Western Society left Brain Dominates

Richard: 35:27

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, we do. We do. Well, we better wrap up Like we say, interesting and complicated topic and if you want to hear more, just go and find it. There's some links in the show notes to who exactly we're talking about.'cause not everybody's gonna type in Iain Mcgilchrist. His, his name is spelled a bit strangely, although maybe Maybe that is how you're supposed to spell Ian. Maybe that's the best way of spelling

Fiona: 35:52

Scottish Scottish

Richard: 35:54

is it I suppose it is isn't it Yeah, I suppose it

Fiona: 35:57

he lives on the is of Sky or somewhere like that

Richard: 36:01

Who wouldn't. It's gorgeous. I know we've got a couple of listeners on the eye of the sky'cause they've messaged in before and, and it's and Sometimes there's been some pictures It's

Fiona: 36:10

gorgeous

Richard: 36:11

Absolutely

Fiona: 36:11

and he, he is, just to say, he's a lovely, lovely chap. I went on his seminar couple of years ago. He is a typical, rather bumbling professor type. As in his glasses was missing one of the bits, I dunno what you call them, the bits that go from the glass over your ear. It was missing one of those. But yeah he's he's he's delightful

Richard: 36:38

Well go and find out more all about the things that he's promoting. You will definitely go down a rabbit hole and hopefully come out the other side with a lot more to know about yourself, so let's disappear for another week. Next week we have a guest and I'm looking down my list to see who it is. Oh, it's Shaun. Shaun Brookhouse What's he gonna talk about? Fiona, as he said

Fiona: 37:04

No he hasn't said

Richard: 37:05

oh we'll just ramble won't we more than likely

Fiona: 37:10

I we we try and pin him down We'll try and pin him down

Richard: 37:14

We've known Shaun for, well, I've known Shaun for 20 years, pretty much, almost as long as uh I've known you Fiona But you were working with him for a few years before I met him

Fiona: 37:25

I think I met him in 2000. It might have been 1999 But yeah, I mean, we've we've worked together ridiculously

Richard: 37:34

I've got one of your, one of your

Fiona: 37:36

Yeah.

Richard: 37:37

back there that the two of you wrote together

Fiona: 37:39

Yeah. We do so much together these days, but we for for years and years we worked hand in glove

Richard: 37:45

And it's because of Shaun, that the YouTube channel that we've got is part of what's called the Brookhouse Hypnotherapy group'cause there's a few of us, and between you and Shaun, you set up a little. A little, little organization to get lots, lots of therapists together, sharing information, sharing ideas, becoming friends, working together. And we've done a lot of training and so on together over the years. We're all great friends. And you know, Shaun is a big, big, big, big part of that. He really is. I look forward to hearing what he's gonna be talking about,

Fiona: 38:14

it'll be lovely

Richard: 38:15

we will be back next week Have a super duper week everybody speak to you then

Fiona: 38:20

Bye