Glossary
Prana
PrāṇaPronunciation: PRAH-naปราณ
Prana is the Sanskrit term for breath understood as vital energy — the force that yogic tradition says moves through the body and is trained through breathing practice.
Prana means breath, and it also means the life that breathing represents — the two senses are not separated in the source language. Yogic physiology describes it moving along channels called nadis and concentrating at the centres called chakras, and divides it into five currents with different directions and jobs. In Chinese tradition the comparable concept is qi.
What it is for, if you want to use the idea without adopting the metaphysics, is as a working description of something real and otherwise hard to name: the difference between a body that feels available and one that feels flat. You cannot measure prana, but you can measure its proxies — breathing rate, heart rate variability, how willing you are to move — and the practices that traditionally build it are the ones that move those numbers.
In a KEO session the word appears mostly in explanation, not instruction. Ben teaches the mechanics: breathe through the nose, make the exhale longer, keep the breath audible and even, notice the difference at the end of the hour. If the traditional framing is useful to you, use it; if it is not, the instructions work exactly the same, which is the honest position to take with a concept this old.