Exploring dance movement therapy as a novel approach to improving heart rate variability in healthy older people

A decline in cardiac autonomic control, as assessed by heart rate variability (HRV), is considered a natural component of aging. However, physical exercise, including dance-based activities, can be effective in preventing/reversing this decline. Aim of this study was to verify whether Dance Movement Therapy (DMT), which uses dance, movement, body awareness and embodied interpersonal communication to promote wellbeing, improves vagally-mediated HRV, which has been linked to physical and mental health, in a sample of people aged over 65. To this purpose, HRV-derived vagal and sympathetic indices, obtained by electrocardiogram signals, as well as tonic skin conductance level, which is a marker of tonic sympathetic activity, recorded during two rest sessions that preceded and followed a 8-week DMT activity, were compared through repeated measures analysis of variance. Results showed post-DMT changes in HRV-derived vagal parameters (root mean square of the successive differences between RR intervals (RMSSD), standard deviation of the beat-to-beat changes in RR intervals (short-term HRV) (SD1) and high frequency power (HF)) in the time, frequency and nonlinear domains. More specifically, the root mean square of the successive differences between RR intervals (RMSSD), the high frequency power (HF) and the standard deviation of the beat-to-beat changes in RR intervals (short-term HRV) (SD1) were higher in the post- than pre-DMT session. Conversely, no changes were found in HRV sympathetic indices nor in skin conductance level. The post-DMT improvement in vagally-mediated HRV in healthy old people is a new finding and we argue that this beneficial effect may be due to DMT's ability to enhance social interaction and promote wellbeing.