Hi, I’m Eli.
Solo-Performance Artist, Speaker, Author & Founder of The Uplift Center (formerly Drunk Yoga®)
I created The Uplift Center to make it easy for you to build belonging in our modern world—for your people and for yourself—through human-centered live experiences.
I've always loved helping people from different backgrounds get on the same page. Bonus points if I can achieve this while inspiring them to live joyfully, empower them with new perspectives, and make them laugh at the same time.
After earning a BFA in Acting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a decade of experience teaching yoga across the globe, I developed a knack—a superpower, if you will—for making people feel like they belong. Specifically, fostering community engagement by making wellness events more interactive and playful. So, it was no surprise (to some more than others) that in 2017 I married my lifelong passions of live storytelling and mindful movement to establish my first claim to fame: Drunk Yoga®—breaking the rules of yogic convention by infusing it with the social ritual of a happy hour.
As Drunk Yoga® grew to international acclaim, I discovered how to translate the very same theatrical devices I use to make yoga feel like a party into a methodology to create authentic communities, cultivate deeper connections, and inspire sustainable belonging.
Enter: The Uplift Center, where I teach my signature P.L.A.Y. Method that has helped thousands of organizational leaders, event producers and entrepreneurial facilitators enhance engagement through play and mindful connection…and fall in love with their jobs all over again in the process.
When I’m not delivering talks, workshops and curating interactive wellness experiences for corporate events, you can find me working on my one-woman shows in New York, hiking in the Hudson Valley and geeking out on astrology.
