Belonging, by Design.
Welcome to The Uplift Center, a Belonging Design Studio dedicated to building belonging and engagement into your culture: at work, within communities and during live events.
We create live social wellness experiences, trainings and strategies that get your people off autopilot and into lasting connection with themselves, each other and the moments they're already in.
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Community is circumstantial. Belonging is experienced.
We create social wellness experiences and educational tools that make belonging inevitable for your people (+ teach you how to do it, too).
Live Experiences
We work with event organizers to create world-class social wellness experiences that spark radical connection at team off-sites, corporate retreats, conferences, brand activations and more.
Workshops & Trainings
Learn the P.L.A.Y. Method and turn belonging into a practice your team and leaders own.
Advisement
Curated culture diagnostics and belonging strategy for teams, organizations and social impact communities.
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 speaker, belonging design strategist and solo-performance artist. With a background in theater, yoga and live experience design, she founded The Uplift Center (formerly Drunk Yoga®) to help people [playfully] remember how to be human together.
How We Build Belonging for You
The Uplift Center emerged from Eli Walker'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 immersive 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 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 wellness experiences seamlessly designed for rejuvenation after a long day of learning, as well as fun, interactive connection 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. We curate entertaining social wellness sessions 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.
Learn Belonging as a Skill
Talks & Workshops
Eli’s in-person + virtual talks and workshops break down social wellness techniques that make belonging [playfully] possible.
Perfect for corporate team-building, conferences + company retreats.
Community Engagement Consulting
Communities engage when belonging is felt. Eli helps you build building into how your people gather, work and connect so purpose and retention become inevitable.
Belonging Toolkit
Self-study resources that help you cultivate meaningful connection in your personal life. Includes Eli’s Belonging P.L.A.Y.Book and UplifTV digital yoga library.
Choose Your Path
Whatever your role + in whatever the room, belonging is a skill you can learn and a culture you can build.
I'm an event professional.
You design conferences, retreats, brand activations, and team-building experiences and you want people to leave changed, not just entertained. You're looking for tools, training, and a framework for designing belonging into every touchpoint of your events.
I’m a people or HR leader.
You're responsible for team culture, employee engagement, and the human experience inside your organization. You know that belonging drives retention, performance, and wellbeing, and you're looking for practical ways to build it.
I’m a community builder.
You run a paid community, a membership, an entrepreneur network, or a social impact initiative. Your people show up but don't connect the way you imagined. You want a repeatable system for creating real belonging in your community.
I’m a belonging-curious individual.
You're done waiting for belonging to find you. You want to understand how it works, practice the skills, and bring more genuine connection into your personal and professional life.
Bring Eli to your stage.
Eli curates world-class hybrid keynote performances that blend big ideas with live experience, so your audience does more than just learn about belonging, they feel it.
Belonging doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. And, as facilitators of human experiences, it’s up to you to learn how.
(But we help make it easy with Eli’s proprietary P.L.A.Y. Method™.)
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.
THE P.L.A.Y. METHOD™
Our Framework for Belonging
Join Eli’s free monthly Belonging Lab.
Part playground, part think tank and part social experiment, the Belonging Lab is a practical, roundtable-style virtual gathering designed for HR, community and people leaders, as well as founders and event organizers responsible for engagement and culture.
Join Eli on Zoom every 3rd Tuesday of each month at 1pm EST.
Why Belonging
The mortality impact of social disconnection is comparable to smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day and high belonging at work is linked to a 56% increase in job performance and a 50% drop in turnover risk.
Physical health has gyms. Mental health has therapy. But when it comes to social health? We cross our fingers in the hopes of “finding our people,” because no one taught us the 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?
We make belonging measurable, repeatable and playful. 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.