Social Wellness for the Modern World
The Uplift Center is Eli Walker's School for Belonging. Born from her acclaimed brand Drunk Yoga®, we build belonging through live experiences and trainings to uplift culture and re-center engagement in what matters: each other.
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We Design Belonging For You
(+ Teach you how to do it for yourself)
We teach people how to get along better + create the experiences that make it happen. Through play, presence, and practical strategy, we help organizations and individuals design social wellness strategies that stick.
Live Experiences
From corporate team-building activities and conferences to brand activations and retreats, Eli and her team of instructors create world-class social wellness experiences that spark radical belonging and sustain engagement long after the event ends.
Education
The Uplift Academy offers workshops, strategy sessions and Eli’s Belonging Toolkit that teach the structure of belonging through mindfulness, communication and play, helping humans and those who lead them cultivate cultures rooted in connection and kindness.
Street Cred.
From Google to Porsche, TikTok to Indeed, our clients trust The Uplift Center to transform their events and community culture with equal parts play & professionalism.
Meet Our Founder —
Eli Walker
Eli Walker is a social wellness speaker and strategist, solo-performance artist and the creator of Drunk Yoga®, the viral global phenomenon that pioneered the social wellness movement by turning yoga into a drinking game. With a background in theater, yoga and live experience design, Eli founded The Uplift Center to continue that mission: to help people [playfully] remember how to be human together through the art of getting over themselves, engaging community and sparking radical belonging.
We believe belonging isn’t found; it’s facilitated. We’ll show you how.
How We Build Belonging
The Uplift Center emerged from Eli's internationally acclaimed (albeit subversive) brand Drunk Yoga® - the world's first "yoga drinking game" that proved making wellness fun creates profound connection. What started as a social experiment became a global phenomenon, teaching us that the gateway to belonging is play.
Now, we bring that same magic to diverse event environments, whether team-building for corporate off-sites in NYC (and beyond), conferences, company retreats, brand experiences, or entrepreneur communities, with the strategic intention your gathering deserves.
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Wellness for Corporate Activities
Our curated social yoga, icebreaker and meditation experiences are designed to help you foster camaraderie through playful-yet-meaningful containers.We specialize in corporate retreats, off-sites, and we have a long history of working with NY and NYC based teams in the Hudson Valley. Looking for something virtual? We offer virtual wellness activities that build belonging, as well.
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Looking for “something fun and different” for your next conference? (We’ve so got you.)
We make wellness and networking a one-stop solution, and our experiences are what attendees rave about long after your event is over.
We curate premiere yoga experiences seamlessly designed to provide all-level mindfulness breaks for relaxation after a long day of learning, as well as fun, interactive sessions for attendees to network + make new friends. Learn more about our conference wellness activities.
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You gather your people, we’ll lift their spirits (while building your brand awareness at the same time).
Luxury brands, event producers and organizations hire us to create unique, immersive pop-up experiences for their communities.
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Our social wellness programming for corporate retreats is unlike anything else out there. More than “just” a yoga teacher, Eli curates entertaining scripts that include icebreakers for community-building, intelligent yoga sequences for rejuvenation and music playlists designed to foster camaraderie through play. *Also available: Professional development talks & workshops on community engagement.
THE P.L.A.Y. METHOD™
Our Framework for Belonging
Belonging doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. Take your sense of belonging into your own hands using Eli’s proprietary P.L.A.Y. Method™, created to help you set up the conditions for connection and build your own social wellness strategy tailored for your work, life, and community.
P — Place: Shape physical and figurative environments where you feel safe to engage with others.
L — Language: Choose your words wisely; the right language invites inclusion, commitment and safety.
A — Acknowledgment: Leverage play to get out of your head and into connection.
Y — You: Through mindfulness techniques, embody the presence through nervous system-regulation that makes belonging contagious.
Why We Do This
Physical health has gyms. Mental health has therapy. But social health?
Group chats + crossing our fingers in the hopes of “finding our people.”
We’ve professionalized everything except how we relate to each other, so meetings drain us, events feel like rooms where people feel alone together and community disengagement is at an all-time high because accountability is unclear.
Not because people don’t care, but because no one taught us social wellness strategies that make belonging a practice.
Belonging is a skill, and The Uplift Center is here to teach it.
Ready to Build Belonging?
Let’s design an experience your people will never forget. Whether you’re hosting a conference, planning an off-site, or investing in your team’s culture through workshops, a corporate retreat or wellness brand activation, The Uplift Center will help you create belonging through play.