Does yoga improve health-related outcome measures compared to exercise in healthy and diseased populations?
Yoga appears to be at least as effective as traditional exercise in improving health-related outcomes across various populations.
The studies comparing the effects of yoga and exercise seem to indicate that, in both healthy and diseased populations, yoga may be as effective as or better than exercise at improving a variety of health-related outcome measures. Future clinical trials are needed to examine the distinctions between exercise and yoga, particularly how the two modalities may differ in their effects on the SNS/HPA axis. Additional studies using rigorous methodologies are needed to examine the health benefits of the various types of yoga.
Ross et al. (2010) studied this question.