Meet Elena Eleftheriadou, founder of Your Pneuma Matters.
My work is grounded in over two decades of experience within medical, healthcare and organisational settings.
I began my career over 22 years ago, volunteering alongside a doctor to support patients in their own homes. From there, I moved into hospital environments, working closely with mental health while completing my degree in psychology. Early on, it became clear to me that mental health does not exist in isolation; it is shaped by work, responsibility, relationships, expectations and access to recovery.
As my career progressed, I transitioned into corporate and healthcare related roles, continuing to work with individuals in diverse professional and personal contexts. Alongside this, I began coaching and therapeutic work — both paid and voluntary — supporting people navigating sustained pressure, health challenges, change and responsibility.
Across these settings, I repeatedly saw capable, thoughtful people struggling despite doing “the right things”. They were informed, conscientious, and trying to manage responsibly; yet, the conditions they were working within placed ongoing demands on their attention, decision-making and emotional capacity that could not be sustained over time. This mismatch was rarely identified directly, which meant people often assumed the problem was personal rather than structural.
Like many of the professionals I now work with, I experienced this dynamic myself.
Sustained responsibility, complex decision-making and limited opportunities for recovery gradually took their toll.
Despite being capable and committed, I became exhausted, emotionally depleted and unable to recover properly.
Continuing to push through had become normal until it no longer worked.
What helped was not a single technique or quick intervention, but a more integrated approach to examining demand, capacity, behaviour, nervous system load and recovery. By stepping back and looking at the whole picture — psychological, behavioural, physiological and contextual — meaningful change became possible.
This perspective now underpins all my work.
How I work now
Through YourPneumaMatters, I offer a structured, holistic and evidence-informed approach to understanding stress and burnout.
Rather than focusing solely on symptoms or individual coping strategies, my work examines patterns across workload, expectations, autonomy, pace, recovery and decision load and how these interact over time within a specific context.
This approach supports a clearer understanding and more proportionate responses, particularly where standard advice or existing initiatives have become ineffective.
My work is:
- grounded in psychoeducation
- informed by coaching psychology and behavioural science
- trauma-aware and neurodivergent-informed
- practical, capacity-aware and non-prescriptive
It is designed for situations where complexity, responsibility and cognitive pressure are high.
WHY YOUR PNEUMA MATTERS
The word pneuma comes from Greek and refers to breath or the animating force that sustains life. Historically, it was used to describe what gives a person coherence — the connection between mind, body and spirit.
In the context of stress and burnout, attention is rightly given to both the body (including sleep, health and energy) and the mind (including thoughts, emotions and stress responses). The spirit, however, is often neglected.
By spirit, I am not referring to spirituality or belief systems, but to the part of a person shaped by values, identity, character, relationships, meaning and the way they relate to responsibility and purpose.
When the spirit is under strain, when people feel conflicted about how they are required to work, behave or perform, the body and nervous system often feel and react to that tension. This can manifest as persistent exhaustion, irritability, sleep disturbances, physical symptoms, or emotional reactivity, even when people are doing “all the right things” to manage stress.
YourPneumaMatters exists to bring this layer into view in a grounded, practical way. By considering mind, body and spirit together, it becomes possible to understand burnout more accurately and respond in ways that are coherent, sustainable and aligned with how people live and work.
WHO I WORK WITH
Individuals
- Professionals experiencing ongoing stress or burnout.
- People who feel depleted, disconnected or unable to recover.
- Those seeking support beyond medication or generic wellbeing advice.
- Individuals navigating change, uncertainty or sustained responsibility.
Organisations
- Leaders, HR and learning teams concerned about burnout risk.
- Healthcare, education and high-pressure environments.
- Organisations seeking clarity before implementing further initiatives.
My work is particularly relevant where demands are complex and responsibility is high.
ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
My practice operates within recognised ethical and professional frameworks and is supported by regular supervision, appropriate insurance and ongoing continuous professional development.
All work is delivered with a strong emphasis on confidentiality, reflective practice and professional boundaries.
NEXT STEPS
If you would like to understand how this work applies to your situation, you can explore the relevant pages below.
