It can bring balance to the body by unblocking the flow of energy in the joints employed by the exercises used. This can be an amazing thing for those who experience blocked energy but incredibly lackluster for those seeking something else such as significantly increased muscle mass. Conventional exercise can unblock the flow of energy too but also eventually cause its blockage through the creation of imbalance. All activities approached with a narrow perspective have this flaw, and yoga is not exempt either. Holistic methods are more common in yoga circles but often only as a matter of degree. Narrow approaches to health are not unique. Everyday examples include:
- all improvements of worth are found through exercise
- all improvements of worth are found through diet
- all improvements of worth are found through lifestyle
This list is not exhaustive, but endorsers of individual practices often do so because it was the missing piece that brought them into harmonic balance within the bigger picture of their lives.
Only you know enough about yourself to say what is missing for you, but it should be stated up front that yoga is often a kind of spiritualism practice of the body with the goal to eventually ascend bodily spiritual energy to the brain and whole being. If you just wanted to do some pushups or something, I suggest you do pushups because yoga is a completely different can of worms (or pleasant surprises depending on your disposition). If "spiritualism" sounds like barely understandable religious hocus pocus, maybe it's not for you, or maybe you don't care and just want to do some special stretching routines and poses. In the latter case, yoga will provide it for you, but there will be a background context of Eastern spiritualism which you can laugh at, ignore, or entertain for fun. If that nonsense clashes with your personality, your time is better spent elsewhere unless something lucky happens to you like meeting a pretty girl in yoga pants.