Prana Mudra is a mudra, a symbolic hand-gesture of the Indian religious traditions, known in Sanskrit as Prana Mudra and signifying the seal of life force.
Form and meaning
In this seal the tips of the thumb, ring finger and little finger are joined. In the hatha-yoga tradition of therapeutic hand-seals it is held to rouse vitality and the vital breath, prana.
Mudras appear across Hindu and Buddhist ritual, iconography, classical dance and yoga, where a fixed position of the hands carries a settled meaning or is held to direct attention and breath. The gesture is described here within those documented traditions.
Sources and caution
Prana Mudra belongs to a family of finger-tip seals, thumb touching ring and little finger while index and middle remain extended, presented in modern yoga and naturopathy literature as directing specific vital energies through a scheme correlating each finger with one of the five elements (tattvas) of classical Indian cosmology. The tattva-finger correspondence itself draws on genuine tantric sources, but the systematic presentation of Prana Mudra and its companions below as individually named therapeutic hand exercises, each targeting a specific physical benefit, is a comparatively modern development in twentieth-century Indian and Western yoga and wellness literature rather than a set of instructions documented under these names in the classical Hatha yoga treatises.