There are numerous amounts of wearables out there at this point with it being near the very end of 2014, and most of them all have a similar purpose: To track your steps, your calories burned, your hours slept, your heart rate, your blood oxygen levels, you name it. The selection of wearables out there provides a pretty similar set of features albeit with their own niche. That isn’t what new wearables startup Prana wants to provide to customers though. They don’t want to hand customers just another option to track the most commonly thought of health and lifestyle benefits being pushed by most of today’s wearables. What they want to deliver is a wearable that combines the capabilities of posture and breath tracking into one compact wearable device for better health.
If you work in an office, chances are that you’re sitting down a good portion of the day and like most of us, you might be inclined to slouch a time or two. This isn’t a terrible thing but it isn’t the best for your breathing nor is it great on your back for long periods of time. This is where Prana comes in. They have been developing the technology inside the Prana wearable for a two year time period, resulting now in a wearable that can tell if your slouching and track the patterns of your breathing. The wearable itself sits on the inside of your waistband,(think along the lines of where your belt sits, if you wear one)using the Prana tech and a 3-axis accelerometer to work the magic.
The idea behind Prana is built upon ancient Yoga traditions and findings from recent medical studies that links health benefits of good posture and breathing to reduced stress, less back pain, and the ability to have better focus, all things that could help during the work day. The tiny device, which is scheduled to ship sometime in January of 2015 for $150, connects to Android and iOS devices via Bluetooth LE(low energy) so it shouldn’t be a huge strain on your battery life, and the Prana itself boasts a 7 day battery life on a single charge. In addition to tracking breathing patterns and posture, using the companion app, one can engage in active breathing techniques and training to better their breathing patterns and posture, thus receiving those promoted health benefits. Does it really work? That remains to be seen since the device is yet to make into the hands of consumers, but this is certainly an interesting device and one that is a bit of a standout from other wearables.