I met Arash Aalem about a year and a half ago at a CCA event where I was speaking on his campus. He is a student at Southern California University of Health Sciences, known to most of us as LACC, and he is the immediate past president of the student body there. He has also spent time as my intern, and I have watched him grow into one of the most thoughtful young advocates our profession has produced in a while.
What I love about Arash is that he came into chiropractic from a completely different direction than most of us. He was not a legacy student. He was not following a family tradition. He was a political science major with law school on the horizon who stumbled into something that changed the plan. And when you hear him talk about why, it is hard not to feel that old fire yourself.
He Was Headed to Law School
Arash's path to chiropractic school is not the typical one. Political science undergrad, law school ahead, and then a job working for a chiropractor that quietly rerouted everything. He watched what she did for her patients day after day and started asking the question that eventually changes everything: could I do this?
What sealed it for him was the history and philosophy behind the profession. He told me chiropractic is one of the only professions outside the seminary that has any real conception of a higher intelligence at work in the body. That statement stopped me in my tracks, because it is exactly right. The foundational belief that the power that made the body heals the body, that innate intelligence is not just a metaphor but a clinical reality, is what drew me in too. It is what keeps me here.
He chose LACC because of its location and because its philosophy aligned with what he was already starting to believe. And then law school got pushed to the horizon. It is still out there. But chiropractic is what is in front of him right now.
Finding Room for Leadership in an Impossible Schedule
Anyone who has been through chiropractic school knows it is not the kind of program that leaves a lot of margin. Arash told me his first year he was barely keeping his head above water. He had no science background walking in, and he described learning ten to fifteen new words a day just to keep pace with the language of the human body.
Once he got through that first year and into clinical work, something opened up. He found his footing, and with it, he found room for what he was genuinely passionate about: advocacy through the California Chiropractic Association. That is the thing about student leadership. It rarely looks like doing less. It looks like finding the thing that matters enough to make room for, even when the plate is already full.
Not Every Patient Belongs With the Same Doctor
One of the ideas Arash and I kept circling back to is something I think about all the time. Chiropractic has so many techniques under one roof: diversified, activator, Gonstead, Blair upper cervical, and the list goes on. And sometimes we spend more energy defending our own approach than we do asking which patient actually belongs with which doctor.
Arash's vision, even as a student, is collaborative. He wants chiropractors to get comfortable referring to one another the way a general practitioner refers to a specialist. Chiropractic works. That much is not in question. The real work is recognizing when a patient needs something you do not offer, and having the humility and the relationships in place to send them to someone who does.
I think about this every time I refer a patient out. It is not a failure. It is good medicine.
What He Saw in My Office That No Lecture Could Teach
Arash told me something during our conversation that has stayed with me. He said it is one thing to hear a doctor talk about success stories from a stage. It is an entirely different thing to sit across from a patient telling their own story firsthand, describing the disc surgery they avoided or the symptom that resolved with no obvious connection to their spine.
This is exactly why I bring students into the office. I can stand up and explain Blair upper cervical care all day long. But watching a future doctor witness the moment a patient connects the dots themselves, that is the education no textbook provides. Arash got to see that. And you can tell it landed.
Where He Thinks Chiropractic Is Headed
I asked Arash where he wants to see our profession in five years and his answer gave me real hope. He believes that as chiropractic becomes more integrated into the broader medical conversation and recognized as a legitimate answer for neck and low back pain, we can move the conversation further. He sees a future where people under thirty see a chiropractor as routinely as they see a dentist, and where that shift drives down rates of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and other conditions rooted in nervous system dysfunction.
I do not think that is outlandish. I think it is exactly the direction we need to move. And watching someone this early in his career already understand the full picture gives me real confidence in where things are headed.
Structure dictates function. Above down, inside out. When your body is in alignment, you get to express life on a completely different level. Arash gets that. And whatever comes next for him, whether it is law school, full-time advocacy, or a practice of his own, the profession is better for having him in it.
Listen to the full conversation with Arash Aalem on the Well Connected Podcast: Live Your Life in Alignment. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Find us at wellconnectedchiro.com
