Have You Heard of a Longevity Rave?

A night of dancing led to experiments on connection, biology and longevity

Kimberly Goad

Updated June 16, 2026

Tina Woods pushing back her hair as she DJs at a club

Tina Woods, aka Tina Technotic, began DJing after a foot injury sidelined her own dancing and now she DJs throughout Europe.

Courtesy DJ Tina Woods

Late one Saturday night in 2021, Tina Woods and two friends were heading home after an evening celebrating a friend’s 60th birthday when they realized they weren’t ready to call it a night. From the back seat of a London cab, they asked the driver to take them to a popular nightclub where they danced for hours like their 20-something selves.

What might have been just a memorable girls’ night became something much more for Woods, who has built her career around longevity science and health span innovation. She had what she calls “an awakening” on the dance floor.

“I remember thinking, ‘I haven’t felt like this in years,’ ” says Woods, now 62. “I felt energized, connected, alive in a completely different way.” The scientist in her wondered: What is going on here?

In the days that followed, the answer came to her. “We’re very good at measuring what keeps us alive, but we’re not good at measuring what makes us feel alive,” she says. “And that felt like a gap — almost a blind spot.”

At the time, Woods was already deeply immersed in longevity science as a strategist and founder and CEO of London-based Collider Health, a longevity and health strategy firm focused on extending health span — the number of years a person lives in good health. In her own life, she had nailed the fundamentals: exercise, nutrition, sleep and metabolic health. She had even seen improvements in her biological age.

But the experience on the dance floor didn’t fit neatly into any of those metrics.

“It made me realize that feeling energized, connected and purposeful might actually be a driver of those outcomes — not just a nice side effect,” she says. “The environments we put ourselves in — the people, the music, the shared experiences — aren’t separate from health. They are part of it.”

 The science of feeling alive

That thinking aligns with a growing body of research into how environmental and social factors — from the air you breathe to the people you surround yourself with — impact your biology and health. The research is called exposome science. Researchers have known for a while that social isolation is associated with an increased risk of dying at levels comparable to smoking, while positive social experiences have been linked to benefits including stress regulation and better immune function.

Legal Disclaimer

Best Of

Women and Brain Health

Brain Health for Caregivers

Hearing Health Is Part of Brain Health

Eat Smart

“What you have on a dance floor is actually quite unique,” Woods says. “Music, movement, social bonding, sensory stimulation, emotional release — all happening at once. These are the kinds of inputs we believe can influence inflammation, the nervous system and even gene expression over time.”

Still, the idea remained largely theoretical for Woods — until an unwelcome pause forced her to explore it more deliberately.

 Combining dance raves and research

In 2023, foot surgery meant Woods would have to take a break from the all-night raves that had become a regular part of her life. How, she wondered, would she cope without being able to dance? The answer came in the form of an unusual gift from her three grown sons: DJ equipment. Realizing she could stay connected to dancing in a different way, she learned how to mix music.

Tina Woods smiling and dancing at a club around other people with confetti falling

Tina Woods works with researchers to measure the impact of dancing on longevity.

Courtesy DJ Tina Woods

What started as a fun distraction quickly became something more. Six months after her surgery, Woods hosted her first gig as a DJ and dubbed it a “Longevity Rave.” More than 200 people of all ages joined in.

She soon adopted the DJ name Tina Technotic and now plays sets in London, Berlin, Vienna and Milan. These aren’t just parties. They’re experiments, a way to explore “whether there are biological signatures associated with states like joy, connection and meaning,” she says.

That idea is now at the center of what Woods and her research collaborators call the JoyScore Experiment — a multi-year effort to answer a deceptively simple question: If joy and social connection can improve health, is it possible to measure those effects biologically?

At Longevity Raves, participants are part of a real-world observational study. Using a combination of wearable devices; brainwave sensors; heart-rate monitors; mood and connection surveys; and biological samples, such as saliva and blood, Woods and her research collaborators track how the shared experience influences brain activity. They also track other physiological responses, including heart rate variability, stress hormones (e.g., cortisol) and bonding hormones (e.g., oxytocin).

“A lot of the underlying science already exists,” Woods says. “We know that loneliness is a major health risk, that synchronized movement changes physiology, and that exercise — including dance — may support brain health. What’s new is putting it all together — and measuring it in real people in a real-world setting.”

Tina Woods flowing to the music behind the DJ booth at a club

Tina Woods DJs at longevity raves and studies the impact on connection and biology.

Courtesy DJ Tina Woods

Though it’s too early to make conclusions — the JoyScore Experiment is a pilot study — preliminary results based on a small sampling of dancers suggest that Woods’ own experiences on the dance floor aren’t unique to her.

“We’re observing shifts across multiple systems, patterns in heart rhythms that are typically linked to better emotional regulation, alongside signals consistent with reduced stress and improved physiological balance,” says Macsue Jacques, a data scientist and researcher at Rejuve.AI, a longevity research platform, who is collaborating with Woods on the JoyScore Experiment. They recently presented their findings at the Global Exposome Summit.

“These are still early results, and we’re continuing to validate them, but they point to something quite powerful,” adds Jacques. “Joy and connection aren’t just an emotional experience, they are measurable, biologically meaningful states that may play a role in how we age.”

The long-term goal — to develop a way of quantifying joy and human connection, similar to how wearables track sleep or physical activity — is admittedly ambitious. But, as Woods is quick to clarify, “We’re not trying to reduce joy to a simplistic number,” she says. “What we’re exploring is whether there are biological signatures associated with states like joy, connection and meaning.”