While Americans across the country are struggling to make sense of the new normal of isolation and stay at home orders, nearly everyone is trying to discern new emotions as a result. One popular Denver spiritualist offers a surprisingly easy way to “check-in” with your state of mind daily … by looking outside yourself while focusing on your own shit. Literally. 

“One thing that’s happening now is people are eating a lot more, binging, and you really do want to watch your poop,” says Thuy Dam, popular Colorado spiritualist and Chief Happiness Officer at So You Boutique in Denver’s Golden Triangle neighborhood. “I’ll tell you this, what goes in goes out, and what you hold in eventually comes out, physically and spiritually.” 

She speaks openly and without reservation about the concept. “If you’re constipated, what are you holding in, emotionally? Some people say, ‘oh I hate poop’ and I ask, ‘why do you hate it? It’s a part of life.’” She asks several questions of the people she advises, especially now, especially about their poop. “If you have the runs, are you giving too much? What are you giving and why?”

Although her approach may seem outlandish, several scientists and psychologists agree with this sort of connected mental and emotional dumping. A recent Harvard Medical School study supports the brain/ bowel connection.

“The gut-brain connection is no joke; it can link anxiety to stomach problems and vice versa. Have you ever had a ‘gut-wrenching’ experience? Do certain situations make you ‘feel nauseous’? Have you ever felt ‘butterflies’ in your stomach?” the Harvard researchers ask. 

Dr. Pius Hewin from Denver Health and Hospitals agrees, “We use these expressions for a reason. The gastrointestinal tract is sensitive to emotion, indeed, the stomach is more closely tied to memory and emotion than the brain. This connection to memory and emotions could have an adaptive reason,” says Dr. Hewin. “In nomadic people, or when we were all cavemen wandering around the planet, knowing which foods were safe or satisfying or made us feel good or bad was a matter of survival,” he adds.

“When things in your life are out of alignment, your body will tell you so; the body never lies,” says Dam. She asks her clients to consider the organs within the body and which might be stressed as an emotional response. Sometimes, we’re filtering too much (denial) or not filtering enough (vulnerability). “The liver is closely tied to physical and mental digestion, it’s a filter of toxins – physical toxins and emotional ones.”

Dam adds that frequency and color are also important. Pooping too often might be a sign that you’re too scattered and too little could signal that you’re refusing to digest emotions. But to affect your poop, you’ve got to start with what you’re putting in your mouth and why. “Too much sugar, for example, is often the result of emotional eating. This means you’re not getting the right nutrients,” says Dam. “it can make you tired or sluggish, which makes your mood worse.” She says that the best evidence for this emotional eating and sluggish mood will be your poop. 

So what can you do to improve your spiritual “shit” while you’re undergoing the collective  traumatic experience of self-quarantine, fear, and isolation? Dam has some suggestions.

“For me, the first thing I do is ask, ‘where’s my butt?’” she says. “I need to find where my body is physically, it will ground me. Where’s my butt, where are my feet?” Once you’ve become aware, then ask, “now where’s my heart, where’s my head?”

Physical awareness is a necessary first step before you crawl into your brain. Becoming aware of where your body is on the physical plane, then discovering where it is mentally will help ease into discovering where it is on the emotional one she explains. “Only [after these two steps] will I allow myself to actually feel.”

The timing for this exercise, especially while alone and bored couldn’t be better, Dam instructs her clients. “Now is the time to feel the feels … what is it that you want to change, what is it that you’re uncomfortable with? What is it that you do like? What are you OK with?” 

“Many people jump right into the feeling part and the questions are often, ‘what am I doing wrong, why haven’t I figured this out?” That’s negative energy and your body isn’t ready to receive the answers she tells The Rooster. 

The second suggestion is to steal vibrations. “I look for a song or a sound that’s vibrating the energy I want to have,” Dam says excitedly. “You pick the song, the noise, and allow yourself to breathe; feel your body, one hand on your chest, one on your stomach” adding emphatically that you are trying to tune in physically. “You want to get out of your head, YOUR HEAD WILL DRIVE YOU CRAZY!”

The exercise can be short. Dam says that even two or three minutes of this vibrational thievery will work adding that you don’t have to meditate, just listen and relax long enough to sync your energy to the auditory vibrations. “Feel free to dance, literally no one is watching because everyone’s at home!” she laughs. 

Currently, the world is in a ‘wood’ cycle according to spiritual medicine. Wood indicates change and growth but it also represents anger and aggression and a refusal to bend with the times. “This thing about spiritual medicine is that we’re working to find a balance, so if you find yourself frustrated or angry, you want to get it out!” Dam says that it’s possible to do, especially in isolation, because there aren’t as many social repercussions for the seemingly odd behavior of releasing the aggressive energy.

“Try to bang on something, rhythmically, even if you don’t have a drum, use pots and pans,” continuing with the suggestion of screaming into a pillow. 

She says that one simple thing to do is to just smile for no reason, laugh ridiculously for no reason– no one is around anyway and your body will adopt what your face is doing. “Throughout the day, just smile, keep it for a minute. You can’t be sad with a genuine smile on your face, it’s impossible,” she claims. 

Finally, she stresses the importance of initmacy and sex. “Sex is a great stress reliever, sexual energy is very strong, it’s creation energy,” says Dam, “it’s the second Chakra, it’s about creativity and release.”

Sex is the one activity that encompasses all of Dam’s suggestions. It helps you stay in tune with your physical self, you’ll be stealing vibrations, banging rhythmically and it’ll likely put a smile on your face. Advantageously, it’s also something you can do all alone.