The Experience Miracles Podcast

The Healing Power of Less: Prioritizing Time for What Matters

Aug 20, 2024

Intentional Parenting with Courtney Bursich

Episode 34 — Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP — Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: August 20, 2024 | Duration: 72 min

Guest: Courtney Bursich — Wellness Advocate, Host of the Health Institute Podcast, known as Organic Blondie on Instagram

Key Takeaways

  • Healing happens through subtraction, not addition. Dr. Tony Ebel reports that the 2–3% of kids in his practice who fail to improve despite optimal chiropractic care and clean living are, almost without exception, kids who have no space to heal — their schedules are too full, their nervous systems too stimulated.
  • Parent behavior is the highest-leverage variable in a child’s health. Neuroscientist Dr. Caroline Leaf has stated she will not work with a child if the parents won’t engage in care alongside them — because without changing the patterns being modeled at home, the child’s results are limited.
  • Radical ownership changes the entire family climate. Courtney Bursich describes how moving from a “this is happening to me” mindset to “I am graced for this” transformed her parenting — and her children’s nervous system regulation — more than any supplement protocol could.
  • Margin is the metric that matters. Both Dr. Tony and Courtney argue that the most meaningful measure of parenting success isn’t productivity or checked boxes — it’s how much unplanned, unstructured time you carve out each week for your kids and for yourself.
  • Each child has a unique nervous system wiring that demands a customized approach. Strategies that work perfectly for one child can be counterproductive for another — understanding how each child signals and recovers from stress is a core parenting skill, not a nice-to-have.

What Does Intentional Parenting Actually Look Like?

Intentional parenting is not a supplement stack. It is not a diet overhaul or an activity roster. According to Dr. Tony Ebel and wellness advocate Courtney Bursich, it is the deliberate practice of creating space — in your schedule, in your home environment, and in your own nervous system — so that your children have room to regulate, connect, and heal.

Dr. Tony Ebel sees this play out clinically. In his chiropractic practice, the 2–3% of children who do not respond to even world-class care protocols are not failing because of a missing supplement or imperfect diet. They are failing because they have no margin. Their days are stacked with therapies, travel sports, and screen exposure. Their Autonomic Nervous System never has a window to shift out of sympathetic activation and into the parasympathetic state where growth and healing happen. The answer is always subtraction, not addition.

Courtney Bursich frames the same principle from the parenting side: before you can create space for your children, you have to reckon with the patterns you are modeling. If you are scrolling social media for dopamine hits, criticizing your kids for impulsivity, or running a household in constant chaos while wondering why your children can’t regulate — you have not yet started the real work. The real work begins with ownership.

Growing Up on a Farm and Coming Back to What’s Simple [00:03 – 00:10]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Courtney grew up on a farm, and so did I. And what’s funny is that the more we learn about what actually helps kids thrive, the more it sounds like those old farmer principles of simplicity — less noise, more presence, more real-life experience.

Courtney Bursich: I come to you as a sister, not as someone who has it figured out. I am in process — in process with my kids, in process in my spiritual walk, in process figuring out my identity and purpose. And I think we genuinely miss community because of the isolated, technology-filtered lives we live. Even my Instagram gives you snapshots, not the down-and-dirty of real life.

What shifted for me was learning to love the process of growing rather than waiting to arrive somewhere before I let myself enjoy my kids. For a long time, I was territorial of my time. Bitter when someone asked something of me. I thought everyone was taking from me. But I’ve come to see it as: I get to serve my family. I get to serve my kids. Even the hard moments are opportunities to learn something I can then go share with someone else.

That reframe alone — treating the hard things as growth instead of theft — starts to change what’s possible in your home.

Why Parental Behavior Is the Highest-Leverage Variable [00:11 – 00:23]

Courtney Bursich: I interviewed Dr. Caroline Leaf, a brilliant neuroscientist, and one thing she said has stuck with me ever since. She said: before I ever address children, I always address the parents, because if I can’t get the parents to change the behavior they’re modeling, we will never see the change we’re desiring in the children.

And when I heard that, I thought — of course. But here I am, frustrated that my kids can’t control their impulsivity, while I’m scrolling social media for the exact same dopamine hit. It looks different. But it’s the same mechanism. We medicate our own souls by avoiding pain, and then we wonder why our children are acting out the same patterns.

Generational trauma doesn’t just get passed down as emotional wounding. It gets passed down through the choices we make every single day — the chaos we normalize, the victimhood we model, the avoidance we practice.

“You may not actually have a problem with the behavioral stuff in your household. You have a problem with your habits. If we can get you to change the habits, we get to change the outcomes.” — Courtney Bursich

Dr. Tony Ebel: This mirrors what my longtime friend Dr. Doug Neal — a psychologist with nearly 40 years of experience treating kids with ADHD — told me about 10 years into his practice. He called me one day and said: “I will not see a child with ADHD if the parents won’t agree to family counseling and care alongside them. Because there’s nothing I can do for the child if the parents don’t do it for themselves first.”

That is the cheat code. Taking radical responsibility for your own nervous system is how you create the conditions for your child’s nervous system to regulate.

Creating Emotional Safety at Home: The Story of Sadie and Gymnastics [00:23 – 00:34]

Courtney Bursich: My middle daughter, Sadie, 10 years old, cannot find middle ground. If she can’t find her white Converse in the morning, the day is not just over — the world is over. She cannot recover emotionally. The trigger and the response do not match. As a parent, I have a choice in that moment. I can default to discipline — and I am absolutely a disciplinarian in our home — or I can take an assessment after the heat passes and ask: what is actually happening in her nervous system right now?

No parent figures it out in the heat of the moment. You have to come down off the emotions of the experience first. And then evaluate.

Dr. Tony Ebel: Sadie’s gymnastics story is a perfect example of what so many parents are doing to themselves — continuing down a road that depletes them because they feel obligated, and then wondering why their nervous system is bottomed out. Your Sadie is your mirror. Are you going back to the job you hate, the schedule you dread, the commitment you resent? Because your child is watching how you handle being trapped in something that isn’t serving you.

Courtney Bursich: Pulling Sadie out of competitive gymnastics was one of the hardest decisions I made. She loved parts of it. But the nervous system cost was too high. And as soon as we removed that specific stressor, I watched her regulation start to improve. The lesson is not “quit when it’s hard.” The lesson is: you have to read your child’s nervous system honestly enough to know the difference between a growth edge and a genuine depletion.

“Science isn’t going to come bail you out of a situation where you feel like you don’t have the emotional capacity to have enough stability for your children when they’re breaking down — because you yourself are emotionally unstable.” — Courtney Bursich

Healing Through Subtraction: Why Less Is the Answer [00:34 – 00:45]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Here is the clinical reality that I have to share, because this is what every parent in my practice eventually discovers. The 2–3% of kids who are not getting better — even with the right chiropractic adjustments, even eating clean, even taking the right supplements and oils — are the kids who have no space to heal.

When I sit down with families at their care plan report, parents ask: “What else can we do?” And that answer is never what they expect. They’re thinking another supplement. Another herb. Another protocol they found on Instagram. And my answer is: your child’s nervous system heals via subtraction. The most important thing you can do right now is remove something from the schedule, not add to it.

God did not design children to run a full school schedule plus travel sports plus therapies plus every enrichment activity available. Children heal in space. They develop in margin. Their Autonomic Nervous System is meant to swing between stress and recovery — and if the recovery window never comes, the healing window never opens.

“The 2–3% of kids who don’t get better are the kids who don’t have space to heal.” — Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP

Courtney Bursich: I heard a pastor say something that I haven’t been able to shake: “Your unlearning is tied to your healing.” I cannot heal without unlearning the patterns and habits and behaviors I’ve operated from for decades. I am frustrated because I have the same system and the same result and I keep praying for a different outcome. But the system hasn’t changed.

You can say no is your default. The yeses should be rare enough that you’re a little surprised when one happens. Because when you build margin into your week, that’s where you become creative, where you have grace for your children, where you can actually be present rather than executing an agenda.

Parenting Different Children with Different Nervous Systems [00:38 – 00:52]

Dr. Tony Ebel: This is something Christina and I have lived with our four kids — 16, 14, 12, and 9. Three of them are what I’d call hardwired to handle transitions, move fast, and not escalate. Our daughter Elena is different. She needs a slower pace with more space. And the wild thing is, when given that pace, her creative ingenuity is unmatched. The wiring that makes her hard to parent in a fast environment makes her extraordinary in a slow one.

You cannot run the same game plan for every child. You have to learn the language of stress and resilience and happiness for each individual kid.

Courtney Bursich: What’s unbelievable to me is you can have the same genetic pool, the same environment, and completely radically different personalities and wirings. What I’ve had to do is stop trying to move Sadie through an agenda and start stewarding what she’s actually carrying. Her purpose is wrapped in her specific wiring. My job is to figure out how to cultivate the good seeds that are already there — not make her into the kid the agenda needs her to be.

And once you start picking up on those differences, you become sensitive to them way earlier. I can tell when my older daughter Ella is having an off day before anyone else would notice — because when you take out the background noise and actually tune in, you become a much more precise reader of your child’s state.

Practical Strategies That Actually Build Connection [00:52 – 01:07]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Here are the things we actually do in the Ebel household — not science, just real-life practice.

Every morning on the drive to school, we turn off the radio a couple miles out. Each of the kids goes around the truck and says one of our seven Ebel core values, and then — and this part matters — they say how they’re going to use it that day. Not rote memorization. Application. We’re preparing them for their habits before the day starts.

Every single week, Kristina and I carve out at least 20 minutes for a one-on-one walk with each child individually. No agenda. No plan for what we’re going to fix or address. Just space for them to talk. And through that active listening, the direction you actually want to guide them comes to you.

Courtney Bursich: Turn off the music in the car. That’s it. My 12-year-old was genuinely confused the first time I drove her to soccer in silence. She said, “Mom, this is so weird.” And I said, “I know. That’s the point.” Within a few minutes she started talking. And I heard things about her day, her worries, her ideas that I had never heard before — because I had never created the space for them to come out.

The nervous system response to constant noise is the same as insulin resistance. The receptors stop hearing the signal because the signal never stops. When you shut down the input, sensitivity comes back — in your kids, and in you.

“Become like Fort Knox with your downtime. Not in a bad way — just be very sensitive to every external source of noise, whether it’s a person, a social engagement, a media stream. Protect the downtime like it is the most valuable thing, because it is.” — Courtney Bursich

Dr. Tony Ebel: When your kids grow up in a home where chiropractic is foundational, where clean eating is the norm, where space is protected, they don’t have to be convinced later. It’s just how life works. That’s the dream. Vibrant health and a lifelong relationship with your kids — and the path to both is the same: slow down and create space now, while you still have the season of influence.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does creating space affect a child’s nervous system health?

The Autonomic Nervous System requires windows of low stimulation to shift from sympathetic activation (fight-or-flight) into parasympathetic mode — the state where growth, digestion, immune function, and emotional regulation happen. Dr. Tony Ebel reports that the 2–3% of children who don’t improve despite excellent chiropractic care and clean living consistently share one trait: no margin in their day. Healing, he says, happens through subtraction — removing stressors from the schedule, not adding more interventions.

Why does parent behavior matter more than what we give our kids?

Neuroscientist Dr. Caroline Leaf has stated she will not treat a child if the parents won’t also engage in care — because if the patterns being modeled at home don’t change, the child’s results are limited. Dr. Tony Ebel echoes this based on his clinical experience. The nervous system of a child is largely shaped by the emotional environment they inhabit daily. A dysregulated parent creates a dysregulated home climate regardless of how clean the food or how well-timed the supplements are.

What does “healing through subtraction” mean for kids’ schedules?

It means that when a child is not healing, the instinct to add more — more therapies, more supplements, more interventions — is usually the wrong instinct. Dr. Tony Ebel’s recommendation to families is often to remove something from the schedule rather than add to it. Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care works by restoring the nervous system’s capacity to self-regulate, but that process requires recovery windows. A child whose schedule never allows their nervous system to rest cannot fully respond to care.

How do you parent kids who have completely different nervous system wiring?

Dr. Tony Ebel and Courtney Bursich both raise children with widely different stress profiles and recovery patterns. The approach they describe is not a single playbook — it’s learning the unique language of each child’s nervous system. One child may tolerate fast transitions and high stimulation; another may need a slower pace and more space to function. The mistake is applying the same strategy to all kids and expecting the same result. Observe, adjust, and individualize the environment to match each child’s wiring.

How do quiet car rides and one-on-one time actually help?

When there is no background noise — no music, no podcast, no podcast — children begin to fill the silence with what they are actually thinking and feeling. Dr. Tony Ebel builds a weekly 20-minute one-on-one walk or drive into the Ebel family schedule for each child individually, with no agenda. Courtney Bursich began driving her daughter to soccer in silence and heard more about her inner world in those ten minutes than she had in months of structured conversations. Unstructured, low-stimulation one-on-one time creates the conditions for genuine connection.

How do I find a PX Docs chiropractor who understands nervous system-focused care for kids?

The PX Docs directory connects you with certified practitioners trained in Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care for children. You can search by location at the link below.

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