Steady Bodies - Steady Home with Deborah Myers

Hey, welcome back to the No Problem Parenting Podcast, where we choose to deal with and overcome the emotional and behavioral challenges in our homes, where we help parents lead with confidence, clarity, and steadiness, especially when things feel super hard at home. And today I'm joined by my special guest, Debra Myers. She's a wellness educator, a speaker, and the creator of simple body-based tools that help parents and kids feel more grounded in everyday life. Check out her book, Easy Self-Help Acupressure for Kids and Parents. We're going to talk about all those things today. Debra works extensively with families and schools, and I love that your approach, Debra, is practical. It's proactive, and it's easy to remember, especially in moments that matter, those real high tense moments. So I'm super happy to have you here today, Debra. Welcome to the show.

I thank you. And I'm honored that I get to be here with you, Ms. Jackie. You know, I think sometimes as parents, we make all the excuses in the world for our busy schedules and not having enough time, especially if you're parents of three, four, five, six kids.

It is it is crazy busy. And I think one of the things that we take for granted is that being prepared and organized and taking care of ourself first is so super key. but how do we do that and make it a habit really? Um, so that, because I don't think we realized that that alone shifts the energy in your home. Yep. You can still have a wet noodle on the floor, tantruming kid or an eye rolling F bombing T teenager. And just because their emotion is high and they're in that place, you don't have to, you can shift your energy. Yes. Thank you. And And as you know, as an acupressurist, I love showing people self-help acupressure.

I believe that each and every person has the ability to do the work for themselves. We just need to be shown a technique that's easy to learn, easy to remember, easy to get around to doing because the benefits are noticeable. Yeah. So years ago, I've been in private practice for over 30 years.

And years ago, I decided I wanted my clients to be able to leave their session with me where they're receiving a session of acupressure, but leave and go home, go to work, wherever, and feel that they have the opportunity to be the best partner ever with their own body. They have the ability to pull their hands out of their pockets, make use of these fingertips that you walk around with 24 seven, place them on specific areas of your body, acupressure points, energy points, and help the body experience the flow and balance of energy.

When that transpires, breath follows. When that transpires, everything physically, mentally, and emotionally has an opportunity to be in its rightful place so that everything is easier. Everything is steadier. Everything is more available, literally at your fingertips.

So the very first step, well, you know this one, part of that book that you have behind do is I wrote a nine-step self-help acupressure flow. I call it daily clean your house flow. It recognizes the body you walk around and is your house. You clean it out every day. You're ahead of the game. You prepare your body for what you're going to ask it to do and you prepare it for what might come towards it. So the very first step in that flow is giving yourself a hug, just gently touching your upper arms, anywhere from your elbows on up. The way I teach this, there's no wrong because there's no right. Just use light, gentle touch, find the point, hold it, can change anytime. But as one young nine-year-old told me when I asked him,

when he told me how much he loved the daily clean your house flow, and I asked him, well, how often do you do it? And he says, well, every day it is the daily flow. And then he proceeds to say, and I actually do it more than once a day, Deborah, because it makes a difference. And he started listing everything he noticed. Nine years old.

Nine years old. If a nine-year-old can do it, I think us adults can do it. Exactly. And so when I go into schools and teach the kids, what floats my boat is when they actually go home and teach their parents. The beauty is, it seems like when I am with the kids, they get so engaged and so enthralled, so intrigued with what I'm showing them and what they're experiencing in their body in that moment. I'm in a school assembly with them with 350 kids on the gym floor. And I've got them in the palm of my hands, literally, because we're walking through it. And the smiles on their faces, and they're looking at each other almost stunned, like, I'm doing this? It's a simple nine steps. And then they build from there, because the teachers have learned it now and are showing them as well. The cool thing about this daily clean your house flow. Well, I love the automated video that you have on your website for it. And people can check that out. We're going to have the link in the show notes for your website. So we're going to take them directly to that, that free little automated video. But what I love about it is that you can do this for absolutely free anywhere you are, whether it's the first thing you do when you wake up, you know, you go to the bathroom, you might brush your teeth and do your daily clean your house flow. Or like for kids in school too, we can teach them. And this works for any person

who is willing to do it. You can have depression, anxiety, oppositional defiant disorder, attachment disorder, OCD. You can have whatever, you know, mental health diagnoses, you know, you have. And this works for anyone as long as they're willing to do it. Exactly. I have been with kids who have major learning challenges. And in a very short period of time, they discover how much more they have available to them, because they it starts resonating, all of a sudden, they're thinking with clear thought, there may be someone who didn't even understand feelings, much less be able to talk about them. And let's face it, there, we as adults have that happen a lot of times. And yet, as soon as their body starts feeling the expression of ease, of breath,

of balance and harmony, they start recognizing that they are sensing something. I take oftentimes take the word feeling out of it, because some people can't understand what a feeling is. They don't know how to talk about it. But you bring it to the place of, well, what are you sensing?

What are you experiencing? How is it affecting how you are making the next thing you're doing that you want to do? And as soon as they start recognizing that they are learning something different, all of a sudden they start putting words to what they are experiencing. And here comes a, you know, seven-year-old who couldn't talk about feelings because they had no understanding about it. And several months later, all of a sudden pops out of their mouth. I'm feeling really upset right now. Calming the central nervous system is so key. So it's not just about tell me how you feel. Let's talk about it. A lot of kids who have intense trauma and parents who have intense trauma in their background. Well, I shouldn't even say intense trauma is intense,

right? We don't want to talk about it, or maybe the trauma happened pre verbal. So verbally, we can't really remember it and talk about and work it through verbally, right? But the body keeps the score. I keep that book right there on my it's like my coaching Bible. Our bodies do remember, and we can retrain our body and teach it how to respond differently. So it's not stuck and that reactionary, you know, smoke detector amygdala part of our brain that shoots us back to fight or flight, we can once we can calm that down. And I know I believe you go like this, right? You go right underneath. Here's a big one. This is not in the daily clean your household, but this is one that kids and adults of all ages from preschool all the way up. So if you go right underneath your collarbone and you feel that triangular space where the first rib and collarbone come together? Oh, yeah. Right there. So that kind of dip, go ahead and take one hand and cup it doesn't matter which hand with thumb on one side, fingertips on the other light, light, gentle touch.

Oh, I'm pushing. I'm always like, oh, and right there is an energy balance point. That's all about reducing the strain in your jaw. It helps relieve even relieve sinus pressure, headache issue, whatever the case may be. And key is that it opens up the throat to be able to have conversation and it opens up the breath and all of a sudden, and now place your other hand on your tummy, right below your navel, light, light, gentle touch folks. And when you do that, do you feel right here and now the opportunity for your body to let go of past stuff? It's just all of a sudden in in a place of ease. And when it's in that state, it's better prepared. And it's not forgetting what took place. It's getting on the other side of it because it's all about repatterning, reprogramming,

giving the body in different habit, a new habit, a new way of being, which is one of balance and harmony. And when we do that consistently on a daily basis, like using the Daily Clean Your household. That's your foundation. And then off and on throughout the day, you may take the steps out of those nine steps or start doing something like this, which is different. And that's what I love to do, Jackie, is teach people of all ages that you can just pull your hands out and place them. And once you're doing this, off and on, it becomes intuitive and you start recognizing you're taking care of your body and it is allowing you to experience the moment. And when you experience the moment, you know, you know, one of the things that happens right off the bat is we start listening. We not only, our bodies are listening to us in the state of breath and calm and ease being strengthened. And then here comes that moment in time where all of a sudden the body says,

oh I can hear that now yeah I I absolutely love everything about this because in no problem parenting that one of the first things I teach parents whether they do my DIY course one-on-one coaching or they're joining the nest is to put your hand on your heart and your hand on your stomach to pause and so when I met you a few months ago you loved that I did this and then you said hey here's how I teach it and then taught with that you know underneath the collarbone thing So that's even better. It really does help us to calm down. You know, when I say hand on your heart and hand on your stomach, and I don't mean calm down like, oh, everybody should be calm. That's not realistic in parenting. However, it is our jobs to be confident leaders and lead the way for our kids.

So if our kid is flying off the handle and reactionary to something, and then we respond with all that emotion and match their level of emotion, you know, then we get on that hamster wheel or the merry-go-round or the roller coaster of, you know, who's going to win, whose emotion is going to ultimately win this battle instead of us as leaders being able to chill ourselves out a bit, become steady. almost forces us to push ourselves back rather than pointing the finger leaning forward, you know? And so you're right. It opens it up. You can't help, but breathe when you do this, you cannot help, but breathe. And I've learned when I first learned the six second pause, which is very similar to this. I like, I like this collarbone thing, um, as an add on start doing it in the morning before you even get out of bed, do it in the evening when you go to bed,

because like you said, instinctually, you will start your first response to tense behavior or tense times, stressful times will be to do this. Put things in perspective before you respond. I have a lot of families who make use of the daily clean your house flow at the beginning of the day, just like you said. Those that have time, otherwise they do their own individually, but it's like a designated, dedicated time when they do that.

And then a lot of folks, just like you said, before bed. I have schools where they start the classroom right off the bat in the morning doing that. And then after recess to reset. Recess isn't necessarily a reset.

And so it was actually several teachers told me this, that it was actually their students who came to them requesting that they do the daily clean your house flow when they got back into the classroom. That's so smart. Kids out of the mouths of babes. I mean, if we just pay attention to them and listen to them and actually hear, hear their thoughts. And as we, as the adults at the modeling, the behavior, for instance, as we start feeling it in our own bodies, it's more easily recognizable. It is making a difference.

Yeah. And we can bring it into the mix. In fact, what I love is I don't know if you were aware of this, but I've created posters of the steps of the daily clean your house flow. And I have classrooms, teachers that post this big poster on the wall and the classroom members have an agreement with each other that they actually can say to one of their classmates, hey, Joey, I think it's a good idea right now for us to do the jumper cables together.

I think it'll help both of us. They're not pointing a finger at that other one. They're saying, let's do it together. and the last the jumper cables is the last step of the daily clean your house flow is the one where you gently cup each thumb and finger one at a time for a couple good breaths and when you do that you're balancing all emotion yeah you're helping to balance all the energy that's coming into the body and all the energy flowing through and then letting go at the same time you're balancing all the emotions and motions are important because they're what help us be human and we want them to give us the information that they're doing their darndest working for us to kind of give us a little niggle to say hey take care of my worry i don't want to be worried i want to be i want to be different than that i don't want to be in fear i want to be in freedom yeah i don't want to be in anger i want to be in a state of awareness i mean we have that opportunity to give to our body as soon as we recognize we are the leader of our body.

Yeah, it's so cool. I think it's such a great idea, too, for classroom teachers, whether they're just starting their day out or after recess to kind of help get the kiddos excitement, kind of chilled out a little bit and get them ready to learn the rest of the day. I think it's awesome. You did send me a bunch of these flyers when you have just even on these little cards, you have the daily house, clean your house exercises on there. So that's, that's super cool. I want to ask you what it in your personal or professional experience, is there something that caused you like, when was it or what happened in your life that you were like, you know what, I need, I need to share this. I want to support parents and I want to support them today. So is there some particular experience that stood out for you that caused you to you know, to, to be, to present and to create the daily clean your house flow?

Well, I did that years ago to the creation of the daily flow, because I wanted to make sure I wanted to allow all my clients to know that they could take care of themselves. Right. And then through the years, it was teachers who said, well, you just create a real program because they had taken my workshop. They were clients, my workshops, took what I taught them into the classroom and said, here's the key. This was beautiful. And said well you just create a real program and I was busily creating you know powerpoint thing and it just wasn't jiving but it was you know and then one of my clients a phenomenal artist came to me and said because she'd heard what I was up to trying to do and she said well let's create an animated video and as soon as I had the animated video done she and I doing it together it was this beautiful and the teachers just resonated with it and the kids loved it and all of a sudden And then my marketing folks are saying, well, now you got to create some books.

So I created three different guidebooks like what you showed. And then out of that came the realization that it was time to bring this in-house. And so I went into schools and after school programs. And it was when I was doing that, that the light bulb came on, that it was also important to get it online.

So now I also have a program available online. So if you can't have me in person, you can have me on screen. Yes. That's so cool.

It feels so good to do that. And then as I've been doing schools and in person for this particular one, it was, you know, when I teach this, it's about creating the space for uplifting focus and clarity and productivity and helping the kids thrive, get from where they are to where they want to be. which then is portrayed in the household as well. It all starts being congruent, right?

I don't talk about it being to take care of the extra bad stuff that can happen. I don't want them to go to the place of being prepared for the what if. That's what transpires when our body's in a state of balance and harmony physically, mentally, and emotionally. So So some months after I'd done a school assembly and a workshop for parents and teachers at a local school here in Northern California, this particular school had a gun threat.

And it went into lockdown. And then they had to evacuate the kids to a local fire station where the parents had to pick them up. It was tremendously scary for everybody. and yet what I heard because the next day I called up the principal I said um I'm here for you would you like an extra assembly what do you need and she goes we need you sooner than that can you just come and spend the day spend the afternoon and I showed up and we created a calming room and here come these kids from classrooms from recess from and and just hanging out so I'd have anywhere from 20 to 50 kids at a time for the, as they stroll.

It was just an open invitation for whoever needed it. Exactly. Or we just wanted, oh my God, it was beautiful because as I'm talking about what's putting a smile on your face, what can you find right now that allows you to smile? And I'm showing them the acupressure points.

And this one young man, probably nine or 10 said, well, Deborah, you showed that to us at the school assembly. I do it all the time. In fact, it helped me keep my cool during that really bad day. And then another kid said, oh, well, I like that one, but I like this one better.

You showed us this one too. So one was showing give your hug. One was showing jumper cables. And then there was this one kid that said, well, that's all great.

But the one I like the most is, and guess what he came up with, this one and this one. And it was this beautiful aha. I was darn near in tears, folks. I was just going to say that's really because it was the realization that, yes, we don't plan on the bad.

At least we hope there is no bad, extreme craziness fiasco that takes place. But isn't it awesome to know that either for the school location, for wherever your kids are hanging out, maybe it's an after school program. for your family life that if something transpires something you hadn't planned on that could have a tendency to take your breath away make you hold your breath you know with bated breath wait for the next shoe to drop whatever words we want to put to it we have helped the bodies on all levels and layers all ages the whole environment be better prepared for what might come towards it and I'm hearing get through the that scary time I mean if you're on lockdown in a you know at school and you have no idea what's going on and you're just sitting there thinking and letting your mind take you know or with kiddos to anybody you feel it in the body and there's just such tension to be able to do one of these things to get you through that really tough time so it's absolutely all uh so so incredible and in fact uh Debra you invited me to be a guest on your show So that that episode will be coming out soon and to be a part of your event, which is coming up here in just a few short days or a week or so.

And so let's share a little bit with the listeners about that. If they're wanting some more information about what you do and how you do it, whether you're a parent or a teacher listening, give us all the details. Thank you. And by the way, parent, grandparent, guardian, daycare provider, whatever, whoever you might be, if you have a kiddo in your life, or you are just, you know, once in a while, right, this information is for you.

Even health care providers are recognizing the opportunity that they're being given with this summit. It's an interview series. And I had the vision. I wanted to do it.

So I started reaching out to folks and then got referrals. That's how you came into my life. And it's this interview series where I'm having the opportunity to be with 20 expert speakers coming from all realms, education, educators, education, coaches, parenting coaches, school administrators, health care providers, you name it. And they are showing up as the presenters because they care.

They want to make a difference. They want to help you as an audience experience the possibilities of what's out there. So I'm getting speakers, professionals that are coming with such a state of caring and just wanting to share techniques, strategies, ideas, information that can help you as a parent, as an educator, recognize, hey, I hadn't thought about that as a potential way. So when you register, and I hope you decide to, you will be getting information from all of us.

When you register, you'll get emails for a 10-day period. And every day, you'll get an email with several of the interview recordings, plus all the information about those particular presenters, plus all the gifts they're offering. My goodness, I can't. And that's the other piece.

These people care so much that they are gifting so many beautiful morsels and wisdoms and special PDFs and special lists of how to do this. And, oh, I want you to have a copy of the chapter in my book and I want you to be able to attend my workshop. Yeah, it's so great. such great, such a great resource for parents, educators, teachers, any, anyone who is involved in a child's life. It's a lot of good material content, lots of free stuff, some paid things, discounts on things. I, I believe at No Problem Parenting, we're giving a $500 off discount or certificate for our NEST program. Yep. Our group coaching and supportive community here at No problem parenting. So you've got, it's a wealth of information. If the parents have missed the boat, that starts January 19th, 2026. If you've missed the boat with that, and it's, you're listening to this podcast long after that event is done, they can still go to your website.

The key is to get registered. And then you have all the interviews and the descriptions available to you. Within that realm, you can also then register for the VIP, which gets you even more and a much, much longer period of time to listen. So if you don't have time to listen to the interviews starting January 19th through the end of the month, register anyway, because then you will have access to all of it.

And there's a reason why, by the way, this summit, this interview series is called Wellness from the Inside Out for Home and School Life. That's what this is about. helping our children helping every participant in the family in the school life of the child to discover life can be easier and we can help them get from where they are to where they want to be right so the information is about being a better parent being a better educator being available in so many different ways and it will help you as a walking around human being no matter the age. And I'm discovering there's going to be a lot of youth listening to these interviews.

Sure. You've got, you've got youth registering, you've got parents and teachers and providers registering, and you're really pouring your heart and soul into the caretakers and providers of our kiddos. So I just highly recommend everybody get over, click the link in the show notes so you can get registered for the event. Make sure to go to deborahmyerswellness.com for all the details, especially if you missed this presentation and you're listening to the episode a year later or something. You can get the Daily Clean Your House flow. Watch that video right on our website. Debra, I'm so thankful for you being here today. You are such a grounded, practical support to kids and parents. And to the parents that are listening here today,

there's nothing wrong with you. I know it feels some days like there is, but you're learning how to lead with steadiness. You're seeking resources. You're doing everything you can. And now it's time to really pour into yourself and feed yourself so that you can become the confident leader. I say our kids crave us to be. So thank you so much, Deborah, for being here with me. And parents, we'll see you next time on the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Remember, on the days when you feel like you cannot possibly endure, I want you to remember that your track record for getting through those days so far is 100%. You're up there. That's pretty darn good. All right.

Until next time. Thanks again, Debra. Thank you for being letting me be here with you.