  Quadratic laminations of the unit disk were introduced by Thurston as a
vehicle for understanding the (connected) Julia sets of quadratic polynomials
and the parameter space of quadratic polynomials. The "Central Strip Lemma"
plays a key role in Thurston's classification of gaps in quadratic laminations,
and in describing the corresponding parameter space. We generalize the notion
of {\em Central Strip} to laminations of all degrees $d\ge2$ and prove a
Central Strip Lemma for degree $d\ge2$. We conclude with applications of the
Central Strip Lemma to {\em identity return polygons} that show it may play a
role similar to Thurston's lemma for higher degree laminations.
