About The Uplift Center
A Belonging Design Studio
We help organizations, communities and individuals cultivate more engaged cultures by building belonging deliberately, through [playful] social wellness experiences, facilitation trainings and strategic advisement.
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FAQ
Logistics & Details.
Got questions about pricing, customized themes, or facilitator matchings? Find quick answers here.
P.L.A.Y. Method
Our Proprietary Framework.
Discover the experiential methodology behind our workshops and activations that moves groups past digital fatigue and into authentic proximity.
Why Belonging
The Modern Crisis & Business Case. Explore the empirical data behind why psychological safety and human connection drive retention, innovation, and engagement.
Drunk Yoga®
Where it Started.
See how our viral brand revolutionized the wellness space in 2017 by breaking down barriers to connection through pure, interactive play.
Our Founder
Meet Eli.
From a 15-year foundation in yoga instruction and live performance art to viral community engineering, learn how our roots shape our design philosophy.
“A fitting response to these times.”
-Refinery29
Featured in PeopleTV, Forbes, LA Times & more
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.
What We Believe
Culture is what people feel in small moments of human interaction. The level to which we feel like we belong in those moments is the test of the health of that culture. Get belonging right and the outcomes leaders already care about follow: engagement, retention, trust, performance. Get it wrong and no perk, offsite or slogan will make up for it.
Fun fact: a single moment of feeling left out can drop a person's performance on a shared task by 25% on the spot. The cost is real, immediate and measurable. Lucky for you, so is the upside.
Explore how we help you build belonging into your culture through:
How We Work
We are an artist-led studio. Eli Walker leads the creative and strategic direction and her vetted network of facilitators delivers alongside her, which is how we maintain quality at both single events and across multiple engagements. The throughline is Eli’s P.L.A.Y. Method, our framework for designing belonging into any live experience.
Where We Work
Workplaces and teams that want culture they can feel. Organizations and conferences that want a gathering people actually remember. Communities working to rebuild connection where it has frayed. Different settings, same underlying job: make people feel like they belong.