Advancing Yoga as Lifestyle Therapy in Family Medicine

Yoga-based care is increasingly recognized as a key element of integrative and preventive medicine, bridging physical, psychological, and behavioral domains in primary care. Despite robust evidence for yoga’s effectiveness in managing chronic low back pain, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, anxiety, depression, and other stress-related disorders, translation into everyday family medicine remains uneven. Standardization of prescriptions, dose titration, safety monitoring, and adherence assessment are often lacking. Moreover, patient experience and symptom change—central to the holistic intent of primary care—are rarely integrated into clinical decision-making. Recent advances in validated patient-reported outcome (PRO) and electronic PRO (ePRO) instruments, combined with emerging workflow artificial intelligence (AI), offer an opportunity to close this critical evidence-to-practice gap. However, the operational challenge lies in embedding these tools seamlessly into clinical workflows without overburdening clinicians or patients.

In recognition of International Day of Yoga, this Research Topic aims to strengthen the evidence base and practical implementation pathways for yoga in routine family practice by focusing on PRO-driven, workflow-aware innovations. The goal is to evaluate how patient-reported data can enhance yoga prescription personalization, guide safety and adherence, and support decision-making through AI-assisted systems. Key questions include: How can validated PROs inform titration of yoga as a lifestyle therapy? What AI workflows can integrate these signals into family-medicine consultations in real time? What implementation and evaluation frameworks best preserve patient-centered care while improving efficiency? By addressing these questions, this Research Topic seeks to operationalize whole-person care that is both evidence-based and technologically enabled.

To gather further insights into real-world integration, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
o Randomized, pragmatic, and real-world studies of yoga interventions for primary-care presentations
o Development, validation, and cross-cultural adaptation of PRO/PROM/ePRO tools for yoga-informed primary care
o Workflow AI that integrates PRO data to support yoga prescription, dose titration, adherence, and safety
o Implementation science: embedding yoga into family-medicine workflows such as group visits and social prescribing
o Economic evaluation, utilization, and health-system impact analyses
o Equity, accessibility, and adaptation across diverse and low-resource settings
o Telehealth and hybrid delivery models for yoga with embedded PRO monitoring
o Safety, risk stratification, and contraindication management in vulnerable populations
o Family-physician training, competency frameworks, and shared decision-making approaches

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review

Keywords: Yoga, Family medicine, Patient-reported outcomes (PROs), Workflow artificial intelligence (AI), Lifestyle medicine

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.