1. Spend at least 15 minutes a day doing something for yourself that you enjoy.
2. Yoga helps to relax your mind, body, and soul. Concentrating on your breathing and posture helps to lengthen and de-tense your muscles.
3. Physical activity naturally releases endorphins (pleasure-releasing chemicals) throughout the body giving you an overall good feeling.
4. Laugh!!! J Laughing helps to lower heart rate and blood pressure, which helps to relax the body. Watch a comedy and allow yourself to escape reality.
5. Massage also helps to de-tense your muscles, where stress builds up. Concentrate especially on the areas of your neck and shoulders, which make up 2 of the 3 points of the stress triangle. (The 3rd being the forehead, where stress headaches burrow.)
6. Practice deep breathing techniques to help relieve headaches, backaches, stomachaches, and sleeplessness. Deep breathing also helps to lower blood pressure through the release of endorphins.
7. Progressive muscle relaxation helps to allow tension to flow out of every single muscle from your toes to your head. Concentrate on tensing or flexing one muscle at a time, starting from your toes all the way to your head, and then relax each muscle envisioning all of the tension exiting the body.
