INTRODUCING Dr Laura Priestley DC

5 Alternate Titles

1. The Seminar That Changed Her Life with Dr Laura Priestley DC – Chiro Hustle Podcast 808
2. From Mechanistic to Vitalistic with Dr Laura Priestley DC – Chiro Hustle Podcast 808
3. Find the Truth and Walk the Walk with Dr Laura Priestley DC – Chiro Hustle Podcast 808
4. The Sliding Doors Moment with Dr Laura Priestley DC – Chiro Hustle Podcast 808
5. Above Down Inside Out with Dr Laura Priestley DC – Chiro Hustle Podcast 808

🧠 Background

Dr Laura Priestley DC grew up in Australia in a home that did not begin with chiropractic philosophy. Her mother was a nurse working in chemotherapy wards, watching people struggle with serious illness while becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the limitations she saw in the conventional health model.

Then her mother met chiropractor Dr Kim Furness.

That relationship introduced the family to a completely different way of thinking about health: Above Down, Inside Out. Laura began getting adjusted at age ten. She remembers struggling academically, particularly with reading and writing, and being reserved and less athletic. Over the following year, she recalls becoming more confident, performing better in school, and excelling in cross-country. It would be years before Laura connected those changes in her own mind with the beginning of chiropractic care.

Her family’s journey went deeper when her father was diagnosed with prostate cancer when Laura was eighteen. Laura describes watching him radically change the way he lived—addressing nutrition, stress, movement, and chiropractic care. That experience helped cement her conviction that the body should be supported rather than viewed only through an outside-in model.

Yet when Laura entered chiropractic school, she encountered something she did not expect.

Her first class presented chiropractic primarily through a mechanistic, symptom-focused lens. She had entered school believing chiropractic belonged to a much bigger conversation about health and human potential.

Then came Cal Jam 2017.

Laura was offered a ticket if she could get herself to California. She went—and describes the experience as life-changing.

In her words, it was as though someone grabbed her by the shoulders and shook the mechanistic thinking out of her.

That seminar became her “sliding doors” moment: the event she believes changed the kind of chiropractor she would become.

Today, practicing on Australia’s Gold Coast, Laura teaches practice members the principles that first inspired her family: ADIO, Innate Intelligence, nervous-system function, personal responsibility, and living congruently with the message chiropractors share.

🔥 Highlights

• Laura began receiving chiropractic care at age ten after her mother was introduced to chiropractic philosophy.
• She shares how her mother’s experience as a nurse opened her family to a different conversation about health.
• The Above Down, Inside Out principle became foundational to the Priestley family’s understanding of chiropractic.
• Laura discusses the personal changes she remembers after beginning chiropractic care as a child.
• Her father’s prostate cancer diagnosis became another pivotal experience in shaping her philosophy of health.
• Laura entered chiropractic school expecting a vitalistic philosophy but instead encountered a largely mechanistic approach.
• Cal Jam 2017 became the defining turning point of her professional life.
• Laura explains why students must seek mentors, seminars, and chiropractic philosophy beyond the classroom.
• She challenges chiropractors to “walk the walk” by caring for their own physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
• Laura and James discuss using social media to communicate chiropractic beyond the familiar back-and-neck-pain conversation.

From Our Sponsors and Partners

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  You made it to Chiro Hustle! Sit back and learn from the greatest influencers in the profession on the world’s number-one chiropractic podcast. Before we dive into this powerful episode, please remember to subscribe to our channels and give us a 5-star rating on iTunes to continue hustling.

This episode is brought to you by…

ChiroHD – More than an EHR; Practice Management, Simplified
The Chiro Speaking Company – Attract, Educate & Convert
ChiroSpring – cloud-based, user-friendly software with all the essential features chiropractors need

The Chiro Hustle Podcast is sponsored by Chiro Health USA, ChiroScript AI, Chiro Moguls, Pure Chiro Notes, Titronics, Sherman College of Chiropractic, Life Chiropractic College West, and the IFCO.

Do you want to support The Sacred Trust and uphold a Subluxation model without the grind of launching a new project? Visit our Patreon, choose the tier best suited for you. That way we can continue keeping “The Big Idea” strong, supporting speech, medical, and family health freedoms.

Now let’s hustle!

📖 Summary

What happens when the philosophy that brought you into chiropractic is almost absent from your chiropractic education?

For Dr Laura Priestley DC, the answer came at Cal Jam 2017.

Laura entered chiropractic school believing chiropractic was about health, life, nervous-system function, and the body’s Innate potential. Instead, she found herself immersed in a mechanistic model that increasingly pulled her toward longer appointments, modalities, rehabilitation, and symptom-based practice.

Then she crossed the Pacific to attend one seminar.

Cal Jam changed everything.

Laura describes it as the moment that “shook the mechanistic” thinking out of her and reconnected her with the chiropractic principles that originally inspired her.

In this episode of Chiro Hustle, Laura and James Chester explore her journey from being adjusted as a ten-year-old in Australia to becoming a principled chiropractor on the Gold Coast. They discuss ADIO, Innate Intelligence, patient education, social media, student mentorship, practitioner self-care, boundaries, and why chiropractors must embody the message they teach.

For students and doctors questioning what chiropractic means to them, Laura’s story carries a simple challenge:

Go find the truth. Show up. Get around people who remind you why you became a chiropractor. Then live it.

🔍 Diving In 

There is a moment in Dr Laura Priestley’s story that divides everything into before and after.

Before Cal Jam, Laura was a chiropractic student increasingly being shaped by the environment around her.

After Cal Jam, she knew what kind of chiropractor she wanted to become.

That makes her story much bigger than a seminar testimonial.

It is a story about environment, philosophy, mentorship, congruency, and the responsibility to deliberately choose what shapes you.

The Chiropractic Message Came Before Chiropractic School

Laura did not discover chiropractic from a university lecture.

She lived around it.

Her mother, a nurse, was introduced to chiropractor Dr Kim Furness at a time when she had become dissatisfied with what she was seeing in health care. Through chiropractic education, Laura’s mother was introduced to the concept that health comes Above Down, Inside Out.

That idea changed the trajectory of the family.

Laura began getting adjusted at ten. She remembers struggling with reading and writing, being socially reserved, and not performing particularly well athletically. Over the next year she experienced changes she would later associate personally with beginning chiropractic care: greater confidence, better academic performance, and improved athletic participation.

Laura is careful to tell this as her own story. It became part of the personal experience that shaped what chiropractic meant to her.

Her father’s later diagnosis of prostate cancer further intensified her interest in health. She watched him make sweeping changes involving nutrition, stress, movement, and chiropractic care.

The central lesson Laura carried forward was not simply about one condition.

It was that the body deserves to be supported.

That belief ultimately took her to chiropractic school.

Then Chiropractic School Challenged Chiropractic

• Laura tells James that she entered her first class expecting to learn about the philosophy she had grown up around.
• Instead, the message she heard was essentially that chiropractic dealt with back pain and headaches.
• She remembers thinking: I didn’t even know chiropractors helped people with back pain.
• That statement captures the enormous philosophical distance between what Laura believed chiropractic was and what she encountered academically.

Her mentor’s advice became crucial:

Get the certificate—and go to seminars.

So Laura did.

Yet as she moved through a science-heavy, mechanistic education, she admits that her thinking began to shift. By her third year she was considering a very different model of practice: 30-minute appointments, soft-tissue work, laser, dry needling, rehabilitation, and patient discharge.

Then somebody offered her a ticket to Cal Jam.

If she could pay for the flight, the ticket and accommodation were handled.

For a university student, an almost-free trip to America was hard to refuse.

She went.

The Sliding Doors Moment

• Cal Jam 2017 became the most consequential professional moment in Laura’s story.
• She describes the experience almost physically—as though someone grabbed her shoulders, shook her, and told her:

You will be a vitalistic chiropractor.

• The experience brought her back into contact with the philosophy, stories, personalities, and sense of purpose that had originally attracted her to chiropractic.
• Years later, the emotion is still evident when she discusses it.
• Laura describes Cal Jam as a “sliding doors” moment. She cannot imagine what kind of practitioner she would have become had she not walked through that door.
• That is arguably the most important message in this episode for chiropractic students.
• Your education is too important to outsource completely to your curriculum.
• Schools provide education, clinical preparation, and credentials. But Laura’s experience convinced her that students must also deliberately seek mentors, seminars, history, philosophy, and chiropractors whose practices demonstrate what they believe chiropractic can be.

Show up.

• One seminar may introduce a mentor.
• One conversation may challenge an assumption.
• One speaker may reconnect you with your purpose.
• One weekend may alter the trajectory of an entire career.

Patient Education Cannot Be a Fire Hose

• Laura carries that philosophy into practice today.
• Most new practice members still arrive with symptoms. The challenge is helping someone move from asking, “Can chiropractic help this problem?” toward understanding a larger chiropractic perspective.
• That cannot happen by overwhelming someone with philosophy on day one.
• Laura says education needs to be methodical, structured, and intentional.
• Her practice teaches concepts including ADIO, Innate Intelligence, nervous-system function, adaptation, and the idea that health should not be defined only by the presence or absence of symptoms.
• That continuing education becomes part of the reason people understand why a chiropractor may check them beyond the moment their original complaint changes.
• The goal is not merely retention.
• The goal is understanding.

Enter the Conversation People Are Already Having

• Laura also sees an enormous opportunity in social media.
• People are already talking about sleep, stress, nervous-system regulation, recovery, alcohol reduction, performance, wearables, wellness, and longevity.

Her argument is simple:

Chiropractic needs to enter that conversation.

• Instead of allowing the public understanding of chiropractic to stop at back pain—or at dramatic adjustment videos—chiropractors can use social media to explain their philosophy and invite people into their practices before those people ever walk through the door.
• Social media can show the community.
• It can show the philosophy.
• It can show what the practice feels like.
• Most importantly, it can teach.

Walk the Walk

• Laura then turns the conversation back onto chiropractors themselves.
• If chiropractors teach people to respect their bodies, manage stress, rest appropriately, move, eat well, and care for themselves—but refuse to do those things personally—there is a contradiction.
• Laura admits she had to confront this herself.
• Earlier in practice, she would work while sick because she loved being a chiropractor and felt responsible for being there.

Eventually she asked herself a powerful question:

What would I tell my practice member to do?

• If she would tell that person to rest, listen to the body, and take care of themselves, why should the chiropractor receive worse advice?
• That principle expands beyond illness.
• Boundaries matter.
• Sleep matters.
• Physical health matters.
• Mental and emotional health matter.
• Time away from practice matters.
• Congruency matters.
• The chiropractor is not separate from the philosophy.
• The chiropractor is one of the people who must live it.

One Story Away

• Laura closes with a challenge that ties the episode together.
• Come from the heart.
• Speak what you believe to be true.
• Remember why you entered the profession.
• And recognize that you do not know whose life might be changed because you were willing to share your story.
• Her own life was changed because mentors shared theirs.
• A chiropractor educated her mother.
• Her mother changed the direction of the family.
• Mentors kept Laura connected during chiropractic school.
• A seminar in California transformed her professional direction.
• Today, she carries that message into another generation of practice members and chiropractic students.
• That is the ripple effect.
• And sometimes it begins simply because somebody shows up.

⚡ Action Steps

1. Write down your chiropractic “why.” Define what chiropractic means to you beyond procedures and appointments.
2. Identify your mentors. Find chiropractors whose lives and practices demonstrate the principles you want to embody.
3. Attend philosophy seminars. Do not allow your professional worldview to be shaped by one educational environment alone.
4. Study ADIO. Become capable of explaining Above Down, Inside Out simply enough for a new practice member to understand.
5. Build structured patient education. Teach progressively instead of trying to deliver the entire philosophy during the first visit.
6. Tell stories. Real human stories communicate purpose in ways technical explanations often cannot.
7. Use social media to educate. Join existing conversations about stress, adaptation, nervous-system health, wellness, and performance.
8. Audit your congruency. Ask whether your health, schedule, boundaries, and behavior match what you teach practice members.
9. Give yourself the advice you give patients. If you would tell them to rest, recover, establish boundaries, or seek care, apply the same standard to yourself.
10. Show up. Attend the seminar, meet the mentor, have the conversation, and stay connected to the people who remind you of chiropractic’s purpose.

📢 Hashtags:

#ChiroHustle #Chiropractic #Chiropractor #ChiropracticPhilosophy #Subluxation #ADIO #AboveDownInsideOut #InnateIntelligence #VitalisticChiropractic #ChiropracticStudents #ChiropracticLeadership #CalJam #ChiropracticLife #ChiropracticEducation

Chiro Hustle, Chiro Hustle Podcast, Chiro Hustle Podcast 808, Laura Priestley, Dr Laura Priestley, Laura Priestley DC, James Chester, chiropractic podcast, chiropractic philosophy, subluxation, subluxation centered chiropractic, vitalistic chiropractic, ADIO, Above Down Inside Out, Innate Intelligence, chiropractic students, chiropractic education, Cal Jam, Cal Jam chiropractic, chiropractic seminars, chiropractic mentorship, chiropractic leadership, chiropractic patient education, practice member education, chiropractic social media, nervous system chiropractic, principled chiropractic, chiropractic lifestyle, chiropractic self care, chiropractor burnout, chiropractic practice, Australian chiropractor, Gold Coast chiropractor