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Session : From Toilets to Thriving: Infrastructure, Dignity, and Mental Health Jolie Gutentag, Shawn Shafner It’s time to reimagine how we manage human waste. According to the World Health Organization, 33.4 billion people lacking safely managed sanitation services, leaving them vulnerable to disease, poverty, social exclusion, and mental distress. At the same time, centralized “flush and forget” systems face growing challenges from aging infrastructure, resource scarcity, climate vulnerability, and environmental degradation. A growing field of researchers, policymakers, NGOs, and private enterprises is exploring alternative approaches to sanitation that minimize resource use, expand accessibility, increase climate resilience, and transform human waste from a discarded burden into a valuable resource. These innovations have the potential to advance multiple United Nations Sustainable Development Goals while contributing to human health, dignity, and wellbeing. Yet alternative sanitation remains a nascent field, with limited public awareness and little consensus around how these systems should evolve. Transforming the way we manage human waste requires more than technological innovation—it calls for new infrastruc- ture, policy, investment, cultural openness, and public engagement. This presentation brings the conversation into the transpersonal community, exploring how reimagining sanitation can expand our understanding of health, embodiment, sustainability, and collective wellbeing, and inviting participants to consider how we might advance a more resilient and regenerative relationship with one of the most fundamental aspects of human life. Session : Introduction of online gallery, and a conversa- tion with Haiping Guo Haiping Guo, Dr. Dorote Lucci, Dr. Caifang Zhu This presentation explores Outsider Art as an expression of natural human creativity and wisdom, examining differences between Eastern and Western perspectives on language, art, and consciousness. It considers how Outsider Art may reveal forms of wisdom inherent in human nature and explores its significance in contemporary society. Through these perspectives, the session invites us to reconsider the connections between creativity, mental health, consciousness, and human nature in an increasingly complex modern world.
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