Prana Breath: Meditation, Calm

Oleksandr Albul

In-app purchases

About this app

Prana Breath is a breathing and meditation app with no narrator. Pick a practice, follow the animation, and breathe. 80+ breathing exercises and meditations, from Nadi Shodhana to 4-7-8 and box breathing. Free to start, no ads ever.

Meditation you do, not meditation you listen to
Most meditation apps are a recording of a stranger's voice. This one is not. It is a meditation timer that holds the structure for you: the pace, the stages and the interval bell. Behind it you choose what you hear, or choose nothing at all. If a voice in your ear makes it harder to settle, or if nobody narrates in your language, this is the app you were looking for.

A library, not a playlist
80+ practices in 7 collections, from plain beginner breathwork to classical pranayama. Every one of them comes with a real explanation: what it does, how to sit, what can go wrong, and where it came from, with sources you can go and check.

• Essentials: 12 short practices, free, for a first session today
• Pranayama: 27 classical practices including Nadi Shodhana, Bhramari, Kapalabhati, Ujjayi, Bhastrika and Sitali
• Breathing traditions: Sufi, Tibetan, Taoist and Orthodox practices, cited properly
• Modern methods: coherent breathing, 4-7-8, box breathing, Buteyko, cyclic hyperventilation
• Applied methods: for singers, divers, runners, and anyone who needs steady hands
• Habits: for cravings, for the evening snack, for the cigarette you did not want
• Health metrics: 10 measurements you take yourself and follow over months

What a few minutes a day is good for
A slow, even breath settles the nervous system and takes the edge off a tense day. A long exhale is one of the few things you can actually do about anxiety in the moment, anywhere, without anyone noticing. Regular practice sharpens attention, works the muscles that do the breathing so they tire less, and supports the body in the same ordinary way that walking, sleep and cold water do. Some patterns wake you up, some slow you down toward sleep, and the app tells you which is which.

Sound, and how much of it
34 backgrounds: nightingale, cuckoo, owl, gull, a crackling fire, Tibetan and Vajrayana chanting. A separate sound marks every phase of the breath, so you can put the phone face down, close your eyes and follow the whole session by ear. Or run it in silence. Nothing here plays unless you ask for it.

Built for people who practice
Set any pattern you like, accurate to the millisecond. Inhale, hold, exhale, hold, or a whole sequence of different cycles that changes as the session goes on. Levels raise the difficulty as you get better. Turn the screen off and follow the sound. This part of the app has been refined for twelve years by people who use it every day.

See it working
Sessions, streaks and mastery levels. Ten health metrics you measure yourself, including breath-hold time, pulse recovery and peak flow, charted over months, so progress is something you can look at rather than something you have to believe in.

Free, and honest about the rest
The whole Essentials collection, the pattern editor, reminders and statistics are free forever, with no ads and no account. Guru unlocks the rest of the library. You can subscribe, or pay once and own it forever. We kept the one-time price because a tool should not need a monthly fee.

Why people stay
No ads. No account required. Works offline. Available in more than 30 languages. In the store since 2014, and more than five million people have practiced with it since.

Ratings and reviews

3 years: love this app. The graphics are supportive and definite. They engage my mind but don't detract or distract. Sound option (simple calm chime) if you want to do the practice without a visual. I find an enormous improvement in my daily breathing and notice my body beginning to default to my breath work throughout the day, especially in moments of tension. No other attempt to develop this skill had worked. I have developed a more regular breathing practice and a stronger peace of mind.

I like it. Its great for former smokers Update: I love it. I wound up buying the infinity version. I have recommended it to my loved ones. Infinity Guru even has the buteyko method and you can set reminders. You can do breathing exercise for energy, calm, relax, or to clear the mind and a lot more. I did keep the free version for quite a few months before buying the infinity version but I should have bought it sooner, I just did not realize how much more you get with the paid version and it's really not so expensive. It has many languages to choose from, even Finnish so to try it for free is not an issue for those non-English speakers.

I've had this app for years and still use it almost everyday. Great app over all, so great in fact that I purchased the guru! I would like the ability to add my own sound files (recorded voice, etc.) and have better volume controls. Also choosing different sounds for each part would be nice. You can "adjust" the tone but it would be better to have some different sounds, you can add some of your own background sounds. Very flexible and pretty intuitive. I still use it every day.

What’s new

Prana Breath is back, rebuilt from the ground up.

• Completely new design across the whole app
• Reworked breathing player with a clearer guide
• New Library: rewritten articles, easier to read and to find
• Hand drawn animal covers for breathing patterns
• Faster, smoother, more stable
• Better layouts for tablets and large screens
• Many fixes and small improvements

Thank you for waiting. There is more coming.