My Journey

Welcome to my website. My name is Sophia Georgiou, and I am a specialized voice physiotherapist, exercise physiologist and fitness instructor. I also teach at the postgraduate department of Social Neurosciences at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and in the Postgraduate Program of Physiology at the Medical School of Athens, as an external collaborator. With faith, respect for the body, twenty years of experience, and collaboration with valuable colleagues, I focus on the body and the special structures related to voice, aiming to restore muscular imbalances of the voice in speech or singing.

Completing my studies at the Sports Science University of Athens and having gained experiential and theoretical knowledge of what movement is, how it is technically executed, and how it is safely completed, I wanted to enrich my knowledge in physiology, injury prevention, and maximizing the performance of high-level athletes as a track and field coach. I attended the postgraduate program in Sports & Exercise Physiology (Leeds, UK) and enriched my thinking and practice with new tools. Simultaneously, I specialized in cardiac rehabilitation (BACR, UK) and completed my research (Quantitative analysis, repeated measures-15 months) at a cardiac rehabilitation center in England. Working with people with a cardiac surgical history, I observed how important interdisciplinary collaboration is, as the body recovers, something that is still considered significant today for me, in addressing voice difficulties.

Subsequently, wanting to further educate myself on the structural elements of the body, pathophysiology, and rehabilitation, I decided to study physiotherapy (University of Bradford, UK). Having a particular interest in chronic pain, I encountered clinically the concept of neuroplasticity. The brain's ability to change according to the stimuli it receives is a fascinating chapter for me because with small variations either in movement, information that we can explain as therapist, the individual can avoid the stimulus of difficulty and gradually overcome it, while also being trained in a new movement pattern and a new way of thinking and coping. A movement pattern is an equation, and every equation consists of components. If I want to bring about change, I must identify the components and replace them selectively without neglecting the fact that everything in the body is interconnected, and nothing exists or moves on its own. Recognizing this connectivity, I began training in visceral mobilization (Barral Institute), which often generates referred pain in various parts of the body, acupuncture (EFEA), techniques of somatic release, taping, and therapeutic exercise.

Moreover, I taught for a year at the Technological Educational Institute of Physiotherapy in Aigio and in two clinics of the University Hospital of Rio, Patra. Teaching is part of my work, so I continued for another two years at a private physiotherapy university (IST- Sheffield Hallam Univerity). Towards the end of that second year, while teaching, my own voice difficulty began, and then a new world opened up for me, where the problem became inspiration and inspiration became my professional passion.

I have been working on restoring voice, breathing, and swallowing difficulties for the last 12 years, evolving my personal method with a special interest in decoding the body's voice.

What is BodyVoice? It is the embodied voice, which reveals along with the musculoskeletal, the psychosomatic dimension of the problem. That voice, which the body concealed because “survival”, was more important.

When palpating the larynx, it evokes a sense of connecting with the patient's inner child. This inner aspect often lacks the opportunity or clear intent to fully process its reality, bearing a bodily system that may manifest as unbalanced, rigid, defensively postured, and immobile, albeit not in an absolute sense.

My personal involvement in singing and piano playing is an element that helps me understand and delve into the special needs of professional voice users, where the problem takes on multiple dimensions.

My personal view on rehabilitation is that it requires first and foremost willingness and motivation. It is a process that negotiates change. Our voice is often the means to this change! It reveals the symptom of a deeper cause, which resides in our muscular condition, in the body's daily behavior, in our habits, in the accumulation of emotional states that we have not managed to process. The above often coexist, and this is what makes my involvement with the voice particularly exciting, as it requires an in-depth exploration of the problem's space and time journey.