Many years ago, I was invited to join Professor M.E. Faymonville's medical team in the department of the Liege CHU - Algology and Continuing Cares.
Prf M.E. Faymonville is a world pioneer in the use of medical hypnosis used in surgery and to reduce chronic pain.
As a music therapist, I began to record hypnoses with some interventions about the non verbal aspect on top of adjusting the pace.
Quickly it appeared that music could offer an additional help by creating a particular atmosphere adapted to the verbal metaphors of hypnosis and the tempo of the sentences. So we created a CD to facilitate the MRI test for claustrophobic patients. Mixing music and words, it brought a considerable comfort.
Other psychologists, members of the hypnotherapy team, were quickly convinced that music specially created for this purpose could bring an additional profit to hypnosis. So many specialized musical pieces were composed to improve their confort.
So music has taken a place among other techniques which were already used in the reduction of pain, because it induces hypnosedation.
Two years ago a study was required by Prf. Faymonville to objectivize the effects of the various techniques used by the Liege Team of Algology. Quite naturally music pieces specially composed with diverse techniques known since antique times for their effects on pain were created in respect of the hypnosis text and thus without any words.
7 CD - duration 20 minutes each - used my "slash method " were composed and tested by more than a hundred patients. We are still excepting the results. But it is clear that music will take a part in the treatment of chronic pain and many other disorders.
Here on the left or below, you can find some aspects of the works realized by the Algology team.

Professor Marie-Elisabeth Faymonville is anesthesiologist and head of the Algology and Palliative Care
Department at the University Hospital of Liege in Belgium.

She developed hypnosedation, a new anesthetic technique combining hypnosis - conscious IV sedation and local anesthesia. More than 9000 patients underwent surgery with this technique. She also works with chronic pain patients and with oncologic patients.

Actually she teaches patients self-hypnosis and self-care learning such that they are able to get out of
the vicious circle of emotional distress and they develop their inner ressources.

Medical hypnosis is a safe and effective complementary technique in the treatment of chronic pain syndromes. Learning self-hypnosis/self-care improves not only pain but also psychological factors such as depression, fatigue, anxiety, pain disability and improves patient's global impression of treatment effectiveness.

Nicole Malaise is very renowned in the corporation of international hypnotherapy.
Member of the Algology team of the CHU Liege, she leads individual consultations as well as group hypnosis sessions.

Scientific collaborator ar the Giga Liege, experimented lecturer, she is a regular member
of several Hypnosis Associations and takes part in many Congresses in the fields of hypnosis and Algology.

Vanhaudenhuyse Audrey, PhD
Team leader of Giga Conciousness
Email - +32 4 366 84 82
GIGA-Consciousness
Centre d'Etude de l'Hypnose et de la Douleur
Publications

Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse, PhD, is postdoctoral researcher and neuropsychologist at the Algology and Palliative Care Department of the University Hospital of Liège in Belgium. Since 2006, she has outstanding expertise in the study of altered state of consciousness (coma, vegetative/unresponsive, minimally conscious and locked-in syndrome patients), as well as in modified state of consciousness such as hypnotic state. She developed clinical and neuroimaging research protocols to better understand mechanisms of hypnosis in healthy volunteers and patients with chronic pain. She is the author of many articles in peer-reviewed national and international journals.

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