Pranamaya, the Vital Sheath

Pranamaya kosha is the second of the five sheaths of Vedantic thought, the sheath made of vital energy, of prana, the life-breath that animates the physical body. It lies just within the food-sheath, the physical body, and is subtler than it: where annamaya is the flesh, pranamaya is the vitality that moves it, the breath and the currents of life-force that the yogic tradition maps as flowing through channels and centres.

In the scheme of the Taittiriya Upanishad the sheaths are nested from gross to subtle, and the vital sheath mediates between the physical body and the mind, giving the body its living animation. It is through work with the breath, in practices such as pranayama, that the yogic tradition seeks to refine and steady this sheath. The five koshas together form the classical Vedantic model of the layered self, and the vital sheath is the first step inward from the visible body toward the innermost bliss-sheath and the atman it conceals. The doctrine is ancient and Indian.