What Is The Right Posture For Pooping?

Squatting is widely considered the most natural posture for pooping. It straightens the anorectal angle and relaxes the puborectalis muscle, so stool passes with less straining. A small 2003 study found people emptied their bowels in about 51 seconds while squatting, versus roughly two minutes while sitting. Raising your feet on a stool mimics this position.

Yes, you read that title right. After years of careful research and a refusal to “sit down on the job”, experts may have finally found the best posture for you to do your business.

Although 99.9% of your trips to the bathroom for a #2 have likely occurred on a toilet, the excretory experts of the world have some bad news for you… you’ve been doing it all wrong. Sitting down has worked in the past, but what about changing up the position? Standing is messy and does nothing for your bowels, but what about squatting? Could that be the answer? What a time to be alive, when the pooping problem of the population may have finally been solved…

Before we discuss how this new strategy will completely change our lives, let’s find out why we’ve been pooping wrong for all these years.

Squatting Vs. Sitting

As it turns out, those strange squatting toilets that you saw on your vacation to Singapore weren’t primitive toilets, but actually futuristic ones. That being said, squatting is far from a new approach to defecation. Imagine the nature documentaries you’ve seen, animals you’ve personally seen doing a #2, or even your own behavior when you’re on a camping trip without an outhouse. For hundreds of thousands of years, squatting was the normal way for people to defecate, but everything changed once modern toilets and “decorum” joined the poop party.

Squatting is actually a very natural approach to pooping; children certainly understand that. Have you ever watched a child that hasn’t quite been potty-trained, but really needs the bathroom? They adopt a squatting position because it feels the most comfortable; as it turns out, it also makes it easy to get those bowels moving and empty!

When we sit down on a toilet, our digestive system adjusts slightly, changing the “anorectal angle”. Within our colon, we already have a small bend or kink that helps with incontinence; essentially, it helps us control our bowels. When you sit down on a toilet, that kink becomes even more pronounced, making it more difficult to push out your feces. This causes many people to “push”, which applies pressure on your rectum, colon and pelvic floor, causing inflammation, discomfort and a colon that isn’t completely empty.

When you squat, however, the puborectalis relaxes and that anorectal angle straightens out, widening to roughly 100 to 110 degrees. The path for your stool becomes much more direct. In a small 2003 study by Israeli physician Dov Sikirov, healthy volunteers needed an average of just 51 seconds to feel finished while squatting, compared with around two minutes while sitting on a standard toilet, and they reported far less straining. Less pushing means less stress on that sensitive area, which may help with constipation and reduce the chances of developing hemorrhoids.

On a more serious note, some researchers have noted that conditions like hemorrhoids, constipation, and diverticular disease appear less often in parts of the world where people squat. It is worth being careful here: a 2025 scoping review found that the studies behind these claims are mostly small and poorly controlled, so the link is a suggestive association rather than proof that sitting causes disease. Still, with billions of modern toilets around the world, it seems unlikely we will ever transition back to a squat and poop culture.

What Is The Correct Posture For Pooping?

So what does the “best” pooping position actually look like in practice? You don’t need to abandon your toilet, but you can borrow the geometry of a squat. The American Physical Therapy Association’s pelvic health section lays out a simple recipe: rest your feet roughly hip-width apart on a small stool so that your knees sit higher than your hips, lean your upper body forward, and let your elbows rest on your knees. Tilting forward and lifting the knees is what opens up that anorectal angle, the bend we discussed earlier, so your stool has a straighter path out.

Just as important is what you do not do once you are settled. Pelvic floor therapists are clear that the goal is to relax, not to push: keep your belly, face and hands soft, breathe normally, and avoid holding your breath and bearing down hard. Forceful straining is exactly what raises pressure in the rectum and pelvic floor and, over time, is associated with hemorrhoids. Think of the stool as removing an obstacle rather than as a magic trick; you are simply giving the muscles the angle they prefer.

Does the gadget really earn its place? In a 2019 crossover study published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, 52 healthy volunteers tracked their bowel movements for two weeks with a footstool device (a Squatty Potty) and two weeks without. Using the device was associated with markedly greater odds of feeling completely emptied (odds ratio 3.64) and lower odds of straining (odds ratio 0.23). You don’t have to buy a branded product to get the effect, though: any small footstool, or even a sturdy stack of books, that lifts your knees above your hips does the same anatomical job.

Is It Bad To Poop Standing Up?

If sitting kinks the pipes and squatting straightens them, you might wonder whether standing bolt upright is some kind of shortcut. It isn’t. The standing posture is actually built for the opposite job: keeping stool in. When you are upright, the puborectalis muscle that loops around the rectum pulls it into a sharp bend. A 2001 study in the International Journal of Colorectal Disease measured this directly, finding a resting anorectal angle of about 80 degrees standing erect, compared with roughly 95 degrees lying on the side. The authors concluded that standing “contributes significantly to the maintenance of fecal continence by sharpening” that angle.

In other words, the angle that helps you hold it in on a long car ride is the same angle you are fighting against when you stand over a toilet hoping for relief. You would have to push harder, not less, to overcome it, and the practical problems (aim, splash, balance) hardly need spelling out. So if your goal is an easier, more complete bowel movement, standing is a step in the wrong direction. The better moves all run the other way: get your knees up, lean forward, and let the muscles relax.

The Biologically Correct Posture

When you sit down on your normal toilet, placing your feet on a small stool elevates your knees above your hips, basically putting you in a squatting position. Now, with your puborectalis muscle relaxed and out of the way, your colon can empty itself with less obstruction, which means less time and strain in the bathroom. Even this small adjustment to your internal organs and external habits can make a huge change in your life, but adding this type of squatting potty to your bathroom decor is hardly a change at all!

Your family’s health will improve, your guests will enjoy their “exotic” experience, and you can finally go to sleep with the knowledge that you’re pooping the right way. Everybody wins.