YANA YANEVA
Behavioural Specialist · Author · Chairwoman, British Psychological Society Scotland ·
Identity Architect
Yana Yaneva lost everything in the space of a few months many years ago - her job, her relationship, and her sense of who she was. What she found in the silence that followed became the foundation of everything she now teaches.
She was born in Plovdiv, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe, surrounded by philosophy, folklore, and a family that believed how you think determines everything else. After graduating with honours in Psychology from South-West University in Bulgaria, she built over a decade-long career at the intersection of behavioural science and human performance, working with leaders, organisations, and individuals across some of the most high-pressure environments on a global scale. Along the way, she worked in Alaska, fell in love with Edinburgh, and became Chairwoman of the British Psychological Society in Scotland.
But her most important education didn't happen in a boardroom or a lecture hall.
It happened suddenly in her living room.
Confronted with the question she had never been asked to answer - Who are you when everything is taken away? Yana turned to the only voices she trusted, the ancient ones. Epictetus. Seneca. Marcus Aurelius, Dostoevsky, Jung and many more she studied in University. Not as historical footnotes, but as interlocutors. As the kind of brutal, clear-eyed companions that only appear when everything else has gone quiet.
The answer she found, built from ancient philosophy, behavioural psychology, and the kind of honesty that only comes from having nothing left to lose, became the foundation of everything she now teaches.
Her upcoming book, ENOUGH. The Ancient Laws of Being Human in a World That Profits From Your Emptiness!, is the culmination of all of it. Part personal testimony, part behavioural science, part ancient conversation. It is structured as a dialogue between Yana's life and the philosophers who understood it long before she was born. It is the book she needed when she was sitting in her living room. And the one she believes this generation urgently needs now.
THE WORK
She created PandoraSoul, a psychology-based experience for people reclaiming their identity. She developed the Letters from the Ancient - monthly letters written as if history's greatest philosophers sat down and wrote directly to you, delivered with ritual and intention to subscribers across the world. And she is the founder of the Identity Architecture programme - a structured psychological process helping individuals rebuild from the inside out, regardless of their background, position, or circumstance.
"Nothing new is actually new. We keep renaming ancient truths for profit. It is time to stop performing our lives and start living them, before it is truly too late." - Yana
Yana lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland, and believes, with the certainty that comes only from having been completely undone, that the most important conversation you will ever have is the one you finally have with yourself.
P.S. Here are some of her favourite moments with Family & Friends!
