If you think spare time is a luxury you can't afford, think again…relaxation is vital to your happiness, health and peace of mind.

From panic attacks to sleepless nights, angry outburts to illness if stress is allowed to wreak havoc in your life then your on a one way street to disaster.

The secret to stress relaxation techniques

That's easy - learn how to relax at will, especially during moments of anxiety or panic. The second part is to get into the habit of getting rid pent up stress and tension.

Without doing this, excess stress and the pressure this creates gets stored in your body as tension and eventually leads to mental, physical or emotional breakdown. As you would expectr anything that is under pressure over time would naturall do.

The key to preventing this from happening, as I discovered later on, was to manage the stress on a daily basis. Now while that may sound easy to do, the fact is that it requires starting a new habit that you must stick to every day.

The great news is that this habit will only benefit you. It will help you to have more energy, feel better about yourself, sleep better, be more relaxed and most of all improve your health.

So what exactly is this habit? I call it the ultimate relaxation technique. That's right,it's simply giving yourself 5, 10, 20 or even 60 minutes a day that's devoted to totally relaxing your mind and body.

You can call it time-out from the rat-race if you like, but the important part is that you commit to do it daily.

More benefits of natural stress relief

The benefits happen immediately and the more you do it, the deeper and quicker you will learn to relax. Just like to improve any skill you need to practice it over and over again, so do does the same apply to learning to relax.

Here are some basic tips on how I first got started on stress relaxation techniques.

1. Make time in your schedule to relax (I chose 6.30pm in
the evenings for 20 minutes initially).

2. Make sure you won't be disturbed (put a sign on the door,
turn off your mobile phone and let it go to message bank. Tell any housemates, etc that you won't be available for 5,10, 20, or however many minutes you need).

3. Choose an activity that you know will help you to relax
(i.e. yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, etc).

4. At the end of each session lay down flat on your back for
at least 5 minutes without moving your body. This helps your relaxation technique to penetrate deeper into the muscles and cells.