Prana pratishtha for a temple's main image is typically the climax of a larger consecration ceremony, kumbhabhishekam, which prepares the whole structure alongside the image, and the two rites are commonly discussed together even though prana pratishtha specifically names the animation of the image rather than the wider building rite. The consecrated status a murti receives through this rite is not treated as automatically permanent in all traditions: images can lose consecrated status through neglect, damage, or ritual pollution, and require reconsecration, and temples periodically perform renewal ceremonies, often on a fixed cycle measured in years, to refresh the installed presence, a recognition that the relationship the rite establishes is understood as maintained rather than fixed once for all.
Once installed, the image receives daily ritual care, puja, bathing, dressing, feeding and other forms of hospitality appropriate to a divine and honoured resident, care that presumes the reality prana pratishtha is understood to have conferred. Home shrine images typically receive a simpler version of the same underlying rite, performed by a family priest, reflecting the same theology at domestic scale, so that the same basic ritual logic that animates a major temple's central deity also governs the modest images kept in millions of ordinary Hindu households.