How to Take the Best Freaking Poop of Your Life

Nothing beats an A+ poop. Picture it: You wake up, have a cup of coffee, and head to the toilet where everything slides out smoothly. You wipe once or twice and get on with your day. It feels like a weight’s been lifted off your shoulders (or, rather, expelled from your gut). Julia Barten, DPT, a physical therapist at the Stanford Pelvic Health Center, calls this a “Unicorn Poop,” or “a well-formed stool, it’s the right time, it’s the right moment. You sit down, relax, and everything just happens,” she says.

There are a ton of things you can do in your day-to-day life to make this experience happen regularly, like getting seven to eight hours of sleep per night, prioritizing fiber-rich foods, exercising daily if you can, and managing stress levels. But what about when it’s time to hit the can? Is there anything you can do in the moment to drop an amazing deuce? We asked two poop professionals exactly what to do when nature calls. Here’s what they said.

Hold back until you feel The Urge.

It’s important to wait until you really have to go and not a second sooner, Barten says. You don’t want to wind up sitting on the toilet for too long, as it could give you even more gut trouble (more on that in a minute). “If you have an abdominal cramp or sensation where you think a bowel movement might be coming soon, but it’s not quite the right time, you can’t force the gut to have a bowel movement before it’s actually ready,” she explains.

So, what exactly does The Urge feel like? You should feel some pressure in your bum that needs to be released—a sensation that makes you think, “Oh, it’s coming soon,” says Barten. That’s your cue it’s time to find a bathroom.

And if you ignore that call because you’re in a meeting or stuck on a highway? This isn’t a big deal if you do it every so often, but try not to make it a habit. “Chronic deferring of urges over time can lead to stretching of the rectal wall, which may decrease your awareness of future urges and lead to bowel problems,” says Barten.

Do some gentle pre-pot stretches.

You can do a few small exercises a couple of minutes before it’s go time (or while you’re literally on the toilet to speed things up). First: Give your belly a little massage—Barten recommends rubbing in a clockwise direction or stroking the lower left side of your abdomen, which is where poop travels down your colon. This doesn’t push it out, per se, but it stimulates the descending colon to promote motility. Twisting your body from side to side, per this guide on yoga poses that’ll help you poop, compresses and stimulates your colon to move things along.

Get into a potty-positive position.

Once you’re ready to rock, try to mimic how you’d go if you were in the middle of the woods, a.k.a. you’re in a squatting position with your torso leaning forward slightly and your knees a bit higher than your hips. Why? That’s because when you’re sitting with your feet flat on the floor, it causes your rectum to bend with a bit of a kink, which makes it harder for waste to flow, says Roshini Rajapaksa, MD, a gastroenterologist with NYU Langone Health, tells SELF. But when your knees are raised, “it’s like a straight tube as opposed to a tube that’s bent,” making it easier for stuff to pass, she says.