Yoga educator Prasad Rangnekar has released a new book that asks practitioners to look beyond breathing techniques when they encounter the word prāṇa. Published by Shambhala on October 13, Prana: The Practice of Body, Mind, and Breath opens the Yoga Masters Series with an introduction to a concept that occupies a central place in traditional yoga.
Breathwork has become one of yoga’s most recognizable practices, but Rangnekar’s subject is wider. In yogic philosophy, prāṇa refers to life force, a way of understanding the relationship between physical experience, awareness and the world. The book distinguishes that traditional idea from the narrower mechanics of breathing. It does not require readers to treat a spiritual account of life energy as a laboratory measurement; rather, it examines how the concept informs the practice and philosophy of yoga.
Drawing on the Vedas, Upanishads, Tantra and Ayurveda, Rangnekar introduces prāṇa through both inherited teachings and practical exercises. The publisher describes the book as addressing the relationship between prāṇa and prāṇāyāma, the discipline of working with breath, while also considering attention, emotional balance, meditation and self-understanding. That range matters because a breathing exercise can be taught as a stand-alone wellness technique without conveying the tradition from which it comes.
Rangnekar’s professional background helps explain the book’s approach. Based in India, he founded the Yogaprasad Institute and teaches yoga as a broader process of self-inquiry rather than a sequence of physical postures. His institute’s teaching framework includes asana, prāṇāyāma, concentration, mantra, meditation, reflective contemplation and community support. His academic studies include biology and philosophy, although the philosophical and physiological claims involved in yoga should still be understood on their own terms.
The new publication is intended for readers beginning to explore yoga as well as teachers who want to revisit its underlying ideas. Instead of presenting breathing as an isolated solution to stress or performance, it places breath within a larger question: what is a person actually cultivating through sustained practice? The answer, in the tradition Rangnekar describes, involves attention and one’s relationship with life as much as technique.
At 144 pages in its listed paperback edition, Prana is deliberately compact. Its significance lies less in introducing a new breathing method than in giving contemporary students a structured route back to the wider meaning of a familiar yogic term. The book is the first installment of Shambhala’s Yoga Masters Series.
Source: Shambhala / Penguin Random House
Web: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/826988/prana-by-prasad-rangnekar/
