Speaker, host, solo-performance artist, belonging expert and the accidental inventor of the world's first yoga drinking game.

It started in 2017 when I married my background in theater (BFA, NYU Tisch) with a decade of teaching yoga to create something that broke all the rules: Drunk Yoga®.

What I discovered while I scaled this social wellness experience through worldwide events and teacher trainings was bigger than a yoga party. I'd stumbled onto a methodology for sparking radical belonging and engagement through play.

Here’s what happened: when my team and I had to pivot Drunk Yoga® to virtual classes during the pandemic, we struggled to encourage participants in team-building events to turn on their Zoom cameras. This was a problem, because if they didn't turn on their cameras, we couldn't play Drunk Yoga®’s signature interactive games (ex: Lose your balance? Take a sip. Mix up your left and right? Say something you're grateful for. Spill on your neighbor's mat? Give them a compliment. Last person to put your cup on your head? Make up a dance move for everyone to do.)

Without the games, students were simply sipping and stretching alone in their living rooms, and that wasn't the point.

So, out of necessity, I did a deep dive. How could I get participants to want to engage in something bigger than themselves?

Through research and trial (+ error), all signs pointed to one thing: belonging.

More specifically: community is circumstantial (people in a room with something in common), engagement is what we want and belonging is the vehicle that gets us there. Play is the gas in the tank.

Once I saw this, I couldn’t unsee it, and in our modern world, stakes felt too high not to share what I learned.

For this reason, in 2023, I evolved Drunk Yoga® into the P.L.A.Y. Method which soon became The Uplift Center where I now teach all people leaders + community gatherers (not just yoga teachers) how to build belonging through human-centered live experiences through talks & workshops, consulting and social wellness activations.

When I'm not delivering talks or curating experiences, you can find me working on my one-woman shows, hiking and facilitating small, playful gatherings for my own community in the Hudson Valley (my home base!).