Belonging, designed into your culture
Welcome to The Uplift Center. We create social wellness experiences that make a culture of belonging inevitable for your people (+ teach you how to do it, too).
Featured in
Social Wellness for the Modern World
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Social Wellness for the Modern World /
Meet Our Founder —
Hi! Eli Walker
As a belonging designer, performance artist and speaker, I've spent the last decade obsessed with one question: what makes a room full of individuals feel like they belong there, enough that they want to engage in something bigger than themselves?
The short version: theater taught me how to design a live experience for belonging. Yoga taught me the relationship between #selfcare and #communitycare. My own life taught me how badly I wanted to feel at home with others. And my unexpectedly viral social wellness brand Drunk Yoga® is where all of it collided, and where I learned that belonging is born from the facilitator of it.
That realization became The Uplift Center.
Community is circumstantial. Belonging is experienced.
The Uplift Center is a belonging design studio for events, organizations and the people inside them.
We create social wellness experiences, trainings and engagement strategies that get your people off autopilot and into lasting connection.
Social Wellness 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
Eli’s social wellness workshops and leadership trainings break down proven techniques that make belonging [playfully] possible. 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 organizations, live events 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.
Social wellness activities for live events
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
Build belonging for your team with our immersive experiences, 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 unforgettable activities for your next conference?
We make wellness and community-building a one-stop solution, and our experiences are what attendees rave about long after your event is over.
We curate world-class 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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Create organic brand awareness.
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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Elevate employee appreciation.
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
Beyond social wellness experiences for live events, we offer educational workshops and advisement strategies, as well as self-study resources to help you build sustainable belonging into your culture long after the event ends.
Workshops & Trainings
Our social wellness workshops, workplace leadership trainings and community-builder cohorts teach the art and architecture of belonging in any culture.
Community Engagement Consulting
Communities engage when belonging is felt. We help you tighten up your social wellness systems and strategies through work-culture surveys and workshops tailored to our findings.
Belonging Toolkit
Self-study resources for the belonging curious that help you cultivate meaningful connection in your life. Includes Eli’s Belonging P.L.A.Y. Book and Yoga Uplifted™ digital library.
“In terms of community building, Eli and her team did not disappoint.”
- Rachel Abbate, WeWork
Choose your path
Whatever your role + 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.
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 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 in real time.
THE P.L.A.Y. METHOD™
Our Framework for Belonging
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 — Acknowledgement: 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 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.