A new study has shown that moving about to electronic music can have positive effects when it comes to how the body deals with stress.
It was conducted by Professor Paul Dolan of the Behavioural Science faculty at the LSE in collaboration with AlphaTheta, the company formerly known as Pioneer DJ, which claims to “make meaningful contributions to the world through innovative technology and high-quality audio equipment, software, and services.”
In each of the two hour-long studied sessions run by Emma Marshall, the founder of a project called Music and Movement Is Medicine, a group of 60 participants was guided through a structured experience – from quiet listening and breathing exercises, through seated micro-movements, to standing, marching, and ultimately free dance. Using devices to measure their heart rates, a picture was built up of the minute changes to the human body when dancing and moving to music.
And what did they find out? Well, it’s all good for you. During the ‘guided breathing and seated’ stages, there was an 18.5% rise in heart rate variability, a sign that the nervous system is shifting to a calmer state. Meanwhile, during the free dance sections, participants' heart rates reached 75% of their personal heart rate – in other words, they were doing vigorous exercise.
(It should be pointed out that we don’t know exactly what genre of electronic music was used in the study. Had Ms Marshall used bangin’ techno or gabba the results may have been entirely different.)
Self-reported data collected from the participants reinforced the findings. Apparently, anxiety scores fell, joy scores rose, and feelings of connection to others increased significantly from before to after the session.
Paul Dolan welcomed the results and said in a statement: "Thanks to these data, we can see how the body immediately reacts to changes in BPM. It turns out the DJ is doing something physiologically significant – not just playing music but guiding the nervous system. This opens up new ways of thinking about electronic music."
Emma Marshall added: "This isn't just about dancing. When the music and the experience are structured in a specific way, they guide the body through a clear cycle – calm, build, peak, and recovery. The data shows measurable stress regulation happening in real time, not as a side effect, but as the direct result of how the experience was designed."
So the take-home message would appear to similar to the one that the hosts of Strictly have traditionally left us with: keep dancing.
