We were lucky to catch up with Faysal Abi recently and have shared our conversation below.
Faysal, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I’ve been immersed in the yoga world for more than 24 years and have been teaching about half of that time. From being a traditional yogi I began to venture beyond traditional poses and practice. What led to this was a serious car accident where I broke my neck. I began to rethink movement when it came to helping my body heal. My focus was no longer fancy poses and deep stretches. My focus became alignment, the relief of my chronic pain, and longevity. Eventually, I dropped all my vinyasa classes and started teaching stretch and mobility classes only.
Every class I tell my students healthy movement has to be done daily. Movement needs to be thought of like healthy food. You don’t eat like shit and expect your body to perform well. Most of your meals have to be healthy if you’re going to be healthy. The same thing is true for movement. If you’re spending most of your day sitting or doing something repetitive – such as yoga, running, weightlifting – your body needs to move differently or compensation will kick in and over time, it will destroy your body.
One morning in January, 2025, I was laying in bed and the idea of a platform with daily healthy movement came to mind. This is when I began developing the Stretch360.tv platform. Instead of telling my students to do something without structure or context, I decided to create a platform where people can go for less than a dollar a day, and for 10-15 mins of time investment, where they can access movement everyday that I believe is the fountain of youth. Everyday is a different way of moving that has a different theme. We may work on the neck, the feet, hips, shoulders, dynamic movement, long holds, deep stretches, and mobility – to give a taste of what’s offered.
There are so many stretching apps online, yet they are overwhelming to navigate and not longevity oriented or functional movement based. People are busy and don’t have a lot of time. Watching an hour yoga class online is a commitment. But if you tell someone they only need to move 10-15 minutes a day, that is palatable. If people care, they can choose to move 10-15 mins a day. Another big factor is affordability. Things are so expensive these days, and for less than the price of a water bottle a day you can have access to 365 days a year of daily classes.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
What got me to my yoga journey was curiosity about the mind body connection. Meditation was a powerful catalyst, and then I wanted to go beyond the mind and into the body, because the two go hand in hand. You can’t evolve spiritually without a strong and healthy body, just like it can’t just be about the body – you need to heal trauma and address the nervous system.
After my accident I had to create my own path of healing outside of the traditional medical and surgical approaches. From building my body back from broken, I discovered what I was meant to offer others. The problem with today’s approach is the body is not looked at as a holistic structure, each issue is looked at individually. I began to look at the body as an entire connected system, and saw incredible results.
I spent the next ten years helping clients become pain free by aligning the structure of their body and eliminating compensation, but my waitlist got as long as 6 months. I knew this wasn’t sustainable and I had to create something that would go beyond my 1:1 work to serve a broader population.
I wanted to make my work more accessible and affordable.
Stretch 360.tv showcases the value of my years of experience, education, being a master yoga teacher, posture alignment specialist, body worker and mobility coach.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
Word of mouth. When you help one person, word spreads like wildfire and you build a reputation on understanding the body. Also, teaching public yoga classes that help people move and age better; further proves my ideology of healthy movement and the body’s capacity to transform.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
No amount of education can replace experience. Having gone through not being able to get out of bed, tears in my eyes to get from point A to point B, gave me an understanding about pain that cannot be taught. So when someone says to me they are having discomfort in an area, (love back, neck, shoulders) more likely than not at some point in my life I experienced that and I’m able to help them having had first hand experience overcoming a broken body. My education is also extremely powerful, but it does not focus on one niche. What makes this approach powerful is the more lenses you have at looking at the problem, the more likely you are to solve it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://stretch360.tv
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/faysal_abi/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/faysalabic
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faysal-abi-220a035b/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@stretch360
- Other: https://faysalabi.com
