This episode is a part of Caring for Caregivers, a series supported by the Van Leer Foundation.
How Dance Can Help Caregivers Thrive
Article by: Emily Brower
Dance was always a part of Magdalene Martinez’ life. Martinez, a Dominican-American social worker who had grown up moving to merengue at every gathering, from birthdays to casual get-togethers. The dance floor wasn’t reserved for the talented— it was a place where everyone belonged.
After Martinez gave birth to her daughter, Tony Rain, the dancing stopped. Martinez suddenly found herself too tired and sore to even put on music.
“I was depressed,” Martinez says. “I just wanted to sleep.”
Her feelings of exhaustion are far from unique. In the U.S., more than 63 million people serve as caregivers, most while also holding jobs, and over 25 percent report experiencing poor mental and physical health.
It took a friend’s reminder that dancing, even for five minutes, could release stuck energy and allow for her to step back into rhythm.
Research shows that even short periods of movement can reduce cortisol levels, regulate heart rate and lift our mood.
Little by little, Martinez used dance and movement to help her recover some joy— and her now two year old daughter began to notice too.
“Sometimes she looks at me when I’m dancing and she seems to be in love,” Martinez says. “Like, “Mommy is happy when she dances.’ Or, “Mommy is expressing herself.’”
Research shows that dance and movement can help restore energy, regulate emotions, and even strengthen social bonds.
The Science of Dance
In addition to strengthening emotional and social bonds, dance has been shown to help with symptoms of depression, improving vascular health and serotonin levels. For caregivers experiencing burnout and overwhelm, dancing can help reduce stress and anxiety, regulate the nervous system, and restore joy.
Dr. Özge Ugurlu, a behavioral scientist in the social interaction lab at UC Berkeley, says that dance has the potential to improve our physiology and increase our connection. At the physiological level, touch can communicate presence and the support of another person, and dancing with someone can have that same effect.
“Moving together can actually be a really nice shared experience,” Ugurlu says.
By connecting the senses and emotional landscape, dance can be a tool for replenishing the body. Additionally, dancing activates a full suite of brain systems: motor, sensory, emotional, social, and cognitive.
For caregivers that are often balancing a variety of different responsibilities, this can be a valuable addition for their own self-care as well as those that they care for. Dance has also been shown to actively engage pain-regulating areas of the brain, making it an accessible way to regulate stress and increase wellness for people that don’t have much time to do so.
Of course, dance is often combined with music, which provides added benefits for the body and mind. Dancing with music can engage overlapping brain networks involved in perception, action, and emotion, helping us experience a deeper sense of happiness and well-being.
Dance in Motion
For Martinez, dancing is a ritual. Before motherhood, she made it a goal to go to her Tuesday night Afro-Cuban dance class. Since the birth of her daughter, that’s become more difficult.
“On my way out the door, my daughter…she gives me the saddest puppy eyes,” Martinez says. “It can be hard to get there, but once I get there, it’s so rewarding.”
Taking the time to dance on her own offered Martinez an outlet to connect with her own body. Utilizing dance as a regulating tool for her daughter has brought them closer together. In the mornings, they’ll play a freeze-dance game. When they pause the music they’ll freeze in different yoga poses. It only takes a few minutes a day, but it has given her daughter a deeper sense of self.
”Self-control is power,” Martinez says. “And I think her knowing that she can stop and freeze and then also command others to do it, I think she seems to be more centered within herself.”
Martinez’s use of freeze-dance with her daughter not only provides an outlet for centering and self-control, in a study conducted by Ugurlu and colleagues, they found that when parents are able to delay instant gratification by distracting their children from what they want right away it makes it easier for them to wait patiently.
Martinez first discovered freeze-dance during her internship at Luna Dance, where the program Moving Parents and Children Together uses dance to strengthen family bonds. Relationship-oriented dance sessions can help families build self-awareness, and research shows that it can improve interpersonal attitudes, and shift relationship dynamics.
For immigrant and multigenerational households, the benefits are especially pronounced,offering both parents and children not just physical activity, but a meaningful connection and a deeper sense of power and presence in themselves and each other.
For caregivers looking for ways to practice incorporating dance in their daily lives, the act of mimicking can be a simple place to start. Doing a dance move and having your child or students mimic the same move back to you can be an interactive and collaborative experience.
Communicating Through Dance
There are many ways we as humans communicate emotions— our faces, body posture, and words. Recently published research about emotions in non-linguistic vocalizations like – laughter, cries, and sighs – found that emotion recognition is crucial to socioemotional development in childhood.
These findings help us better understand how children recognize emotions in ways beyond facial expressions, and how this shapes their social and emotional development.
“Dance in itself is expressive art,” Ugurlu says. “It has multiple modalities of emotion, expression, and recognition…it’s just definitely a really authentic way of training for children.”
Urgurlu says we should find ways to share moments of dance, and remember that this shared movement can actually create great bonds and connection in the community.
For Martinez, dance as a form of expression has become pivotal to her as an individual and as a caregiver. Being able to connect to her own body and share her culture with her daughter through dance has created an anchor for her emotions.
“Sometimes dance can be very simple and just a release of anger and feelings and thoughts,” Martinez says. “And sometimes it’s remembering what my ancestors would want me to do, which is to pass on the gift of dance to Tony.”
Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.
Even just a few minutes of dancing can shift energy, release emotions, and remind us to care for ourselves while we care for others.
Summary: Dance isn’t just fun—it’s scientifically shown to make us happier, ease stress, and strengthen social bonds. From swaying in the kitchen to joining a community class, movement helps us regulate our nervous systems and reconnect with joy. In this episode of The Science of Happiness, we explore what the science says about how dancing supports well-being for parents, caregivers, and families.
How To Do This Practice:
- Pick a Song You Love: Choose music that makes you want to move. Even if it’s just a little sway. It could be something upbeat or a song from your childhood that feels comforting.
- Start Small: Give yourself permission to move for just five minutes. No pressure to “work out”—the goal is to shift your energy and lift your mood.
- Follow Your Body: Sway, step, shake, or spin. There’s no right or wrong way. Let your body lead instead of worrying about looking a certain way.
- Play with Pausing: Try stopping mid-song for a “freeze” moment, then move again. Pausing helps build awareness, self-control, and a sense of play.
- Invite Connection: If you have kids, family, or friends around, pull them into the movement. Science shows that dancing together strengthens bonds and amplifies joy.
- Release and Reset: Notice how you feel after moving— lighter, calmer, maybe more grounded. Let dance be a way to release tension and return to your day with more energy.
Today’s Guests:
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ is a licensed clinical social worker who works with children, teens and adults.
Learn more about Magdalene here:
DR. ÖZGE UGURLU is a behavioral scientist in the social interaction lab at UC Berkeley. Her research centers on emotions, self-control, and child development.
Add Dr. Ugurlu on Linkedin here:
Related The Science of Happiness episodes:
Caring for Caregivers Series:
How Holding Yourself Can Reduce Stress:
How To Tune Out The Noise:
Related Happiness Breaks:
The Healing Power of Your Own Touch:
Make Uncertainty Part of the Process:
Tap into the Joy That Surrounds You:
Our Caring for Caregivers series is supported by the Van Leer Foundation, an independent Dutch organization working globally to foster inclusive societies where all children and communities can flourish.
To discover more insights from Van Leer Foundation and others on this topic, visit Early Childhood Matters, the leading platform for advancing topics on early childhood development and connecting diverse voices and ideas across disciplines that support the wellbeing of babies, toddlers and caregivers around the globe.
Tell us about your experience with this practice. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or follow on Instagram @HappinessPod.
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Transcription:
DACHER KELTNER: This episode is a part of Caring for Caregivers, a series supported by The Van Leer Foundation.
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: As a Dominican person, like, regardless of whether you’re great at dancing or okay, you just try your best. Music is there and you’re gonna dance, you’re gonna be in a family party, and somebody’s gonna pull you onto the dance floor and you’re gonna dance merengue. It doesn’t matter, you know, somebody might tease you a little bit, but everyone is welcome and encouraged to dance. So when I was pregnant, I danced a lot, but once the baby came out, it started becoming really hard for me to dance. My body hurt. I was so tired, so tired and cranky. I was depressed, you know, I just wanted to, like sleep. But a good friend of mine said to me, she’s a spiritual woman. She said, You know, the more you dance, the more you release these energies.
DACHER KELTNER: Welcome to The Science of Happiness. I’m Dacher Keltner. Today we’re continuing our series on Caring for Caregivers, exploring ways to support their health and happiness. In the United States alone, there are about 63 million caregivers, and over 25% report poor mental and physical health. With so many demands on their time and energy, it’s critical that caregivers have tools to support their well being. One proven method: dance and movement. Studies show dance can help reduce stress and anxiety, regulate the nervous system, and, perhaps most importantly, restore joy. Magdalene Martinez, a clinical social worker in the Bay Area, focused on dance as a form of self care, and even included her two year old daughter. We’ll also hear from my colleague here at UC Berkeley, Dr Özge Ugurlu, she’s a psychologist who focuses on emotions, self control and social development. She’s also a dancer and a dance scientist.
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: In the context of, caregiver like, be it children, be it a patient, be it a dementia like, patient, what happens when those positive moments are shared.
DACHER KELTNER: More after this break. Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I’m Dacher Keltner. Today we’re discussing dance as a form of self care for caregivers. Dance helps us attune to one another, helping strengthen emotional and social bonds while connecting with the senses, our bodies and the emotional landscape. Joining us is Magdalene Martinez. She’s a licensed clinical social worker who works with both kids and adults. Previous to that, she taught preschool, and now she’s a new mom to a two year old, so children are a big part of her life. She joins us after using dance and movement as a way to care for herself. Welcome to the show. Magdalene.
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: Thank you.
DACHER KELTNER: You’ve done two kinds of work that I deeply admire, which is, you’ve been a preschool teacher, and now you’re doing clinical social work, and you’re also a parent, so a lot of your work involves caring for others. Probably, it feels like 24 hours a day.
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: Yeah.
DACHER KELTNER: You know, when we started to study stress scientifically, we often study people like you, who are like, Well, I’m a social worker, and I used to teach preschool, and nine hours a day I’m doing care, and then I come home, I’m taking care of people, and it’s just, you know, and it’s rewarding, but it introduces a lot of challenges. A lot of people worry with the contemporary financial circumstance and the budget that’s coming. And here, 20 million people are going to lose income or their health care. It’s going to be compounded. So this is, I know it’s not just you, it’s our culture in the United States. Tell us about the little moments of stress that come out of a life that has so much caring in it.
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: I feel like just hearing you say that my eyes watered, like because I’ve been holding my breath, you know? Yeah, I feel like I I rarely let myself really think about what I do in a day, because so many of my friends are doing that, and sometimes more my mentors, you know.
DACHER KELTNER: Yep, a lot of people who are caregivers like yourself, you know, around the clock have a hard time building in opportunities for self care and get stressed out, yeah. How about yourself? Does that seem true to you that it’s hard to find those moments of self care?
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: Yeah, sometimes. So on Tuesday nights before becoming a mother, I used to go to Afro Cuban class.
DACHER KELTNER: Nice.
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: Religiously, like I did my best to go as often as I could. And this Tuesday, I was like, Okay, after work, after seeing my clients, okay, I’m going to class. And on my way out the door, my daughter’s like, she gives me the saddest puppy eyes. Dance class? And it was really hard to leave. The transition of leaving is much harder than I expected.
DACHER KELTNER: It is those little loved ones introduce all kinds of challenges. So tell us about what life is like with that person with puppy eyes.
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: Her name is Tony Rain Martinez Jackson, and she’s gonna be two in October, and she’s so sweet and spicy and smart, and she likes to challenge herself.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah, when you dance with your children, it helps them in tune themselves to other people in their lives. You know that synchronized movement with preschool kids helps them get along better at school. It helps them with their parents. It even activates parts of your brain that are good for your empathy and just understanding other people. So for our show, Magdalene, you did some activities that involve dance and movement.
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: Yes, well, I did dance with my daughter at home in the mornings. What we usually do is we play a song that she likes, and now she’s starting to request a song so she likes, “I like to move it, move it.” And she says, move it, move it.
DACHER KELTNER: Could you sing a little bit of that song that Tony Rain loves?
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: Oh my gosh!
DACHER KELTNER: Because I can’t remember that song, and I love to hear what you guys are dancing to.
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: It’s something like, “I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it. You’d like to move it.” Like that.
DACHER KELTNER: I’m already moving.
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ:
Go Tony!
And so we play the song, and then we go, just pause and freeze. And then she’ll freeze, or sometimes she says freeze, and then I’ll pause the music.
And go, yeah, go Tony.
Go Tony. Go dance. You’re fine.
And then, you know, we dance, and then we freeze again.
DACHER KELTNER: That must bring you such joy. Yes, it does. What do you find with Tony rain, when she does this dance and freezing? How does it give her insight into her emotions?
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: When I couldn’t really, like, remember and zoom into her face I’m seeing, like, power, you know, like self control is power. And I think her knowing that she can stop and freeze and then also command others to do it, she seems to seem more centered within herself.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah. What a great insight. In all the different ways in which you’re listening to music and grooving and dancing, how does it support your own self care?
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: So when I’m dancing with my family, it’s different from dancing with community, but I’m having this memory of, I don’t know when it was a few months ago or so I let myself dance and cry. So when I was pregnant, I danced a lot, but once the baby came out, I was depressed, you know, like two years of serious depression, but I just danced and cried. And it was not like this big dance, elaborate dance, it was just more like a sway. Sometimes dance can be just like, very simple and just like, ah, a release of anger and feelings and thoughts and, you know, the energies around me that’s happening in our society, in our country, in my city, in Oakland, you know. And then sometimes it’s my ancestors. Remembering like what my ancestors would want me to do, which is to pass on the gift of dance to Tony. I feel like my grandma would be like, you, like if I wasn’t, like if I am, she is like, “You’re not…¡Tú no estás bailando con tu hija [You’re not dancing with your daughter]! If I wasn’t. But if I am, it’s ok. But I hear her saying like, you know, dance with her. Teach her your culture. And she really likes merengue. She does.
DACHER KELTNER: What have you found just in thinking about this experience, like, why it’s important, and how it has felt for you to turn a little bit of caregiving to yourself? Like, what did it give you when
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: I was telling you about that Tuesday that it was hard for me to go to Afro Cuban class. This podcast encouraged me to go. And there’s not a very big Dominican community here in Oakland or in the Bay Area. So when I go to spaces that are Afro Latin, I feel seen. I feel at home. I feel like a sense of community and spirituality too. I talked with a couple other friends that are also moms, and I talked to them about it, and they said, You know, I know it’s hard, and remember that when you take care of yourself, you come home with more. So what it gave me was not just to come home with more, like joy and energy and a bigger window of tolerance, but also a conversation with other moms. So it was just nice to like, hear from other moms that it’s okay, and I felt closer to them.
DACHER KELTNER: Well Magdalene Martinez, it has been inspiring to talk to you. You’ve created an inspiration to just think about how to build in moments of dance and movement to our lives like you have. So thanks so much.
MAGDALENE MARTINEZ: Thank you for having me.
DACHER KELTNER: Coming up. I sit down with UC Berkeley researcher and dancer, Dr Özge Ugurlu, to explore the science of movement and how even a few minutes of dancing can lift our mood and strengthen bonds between caregivers and children.
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: Caregiving is emotionally taxing. You don’t have time. You’re exposed to, like, chronic stress all the time, and then that’s why I am, like, really motivated to find those, like, really accessible moments.
DACHER KELTNER: Stay with us. Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I’m Dacher Keltner. We’re continuing our series on Caring for Caregivers, and today I’m joined by my colleague, Dr Özge Ugurlu, a behavioral scientist in our Social Interaction Lab here at UC Berkeley, alongside our research on emotions, self control and child development, Özge is also a dancer. She and I explore the science behind how dance and movement can reduce stress, strengthen bonds between caregivers and children, and openness to awe. Özge, it’s a pleasure to have you here.
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
DACHER KELTNER: I’d love to hear your sort of personal experience about dance and awe. I know you got to the study of dance through your own experience as a dancer. What’s that been like?
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: You have to, like, activate so many sensors. You have to listen to the music at the same time, like, anticipate the intention of the other person. So it just like, in itself, I think, opens the gate for empathy, understanding, like, how this other person is like, doing like, really takes this shift out of you.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah.
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: This is such a core human activity. Like, people have been doing this form of movement since the down of humanity, like through religious acts, like through rituals. And then there must be something like so special about it, and then it got connected with my love for emotion. So it was just, like, really interesting for me to understand how or like, what types of like emotions dance can elicit.
DACHER KELTNER: Feeling good in your body when you dance is good for just helping us regulate the hard emotions. Our guest, Magdalene, did this amazing thing, and it blew me away, where she was dancing with her little two year old, you know, on a regular basis.
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: I love it.
DACHER KELTNER: And I know, Özge, you’ve worked with children, and you know how caregivers like the different things they do, like distracting from stress and so forth. Can help them with self control. Tell us how you would make sense of what Magdalene was doing.
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: Researchers have started investigating what happens when those positive moments are shared. Are the well-being and health outcomes of it amplified when it’s like shared, right? And it is called positivity resonance. And so what does positivity resonance mean, feeling the same positive emotions or sharing the non verbal synchrony, like what they were like doing, or like linking up their physiology.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah.
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: Like through those moments. So in the context of caregiver, be it a children, be it a patient, be it a dementia like patient, I think those moments are so sacred, and might be, even though it sounds really easy, might be even hard to reach. Let’s think about it. What could elicit positivity, resonance, a handshake, tap on the shoulder. But I think moving together is a wonderful way of harnessing that positivity resonance, in my opinion.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah, often caregivers, when you care for a very elderly parent or a child who’s struggling, or a teen who’s struggling. Feeling they enter into a state that’s hard to resonate with.
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: Totally.
DACHER KELTNER: And I love how you’re bringing into focus that very powerful mechanism. You know, Magdalene worked at this organization called Luna dance, and they work with a lot of communities that have been really impacted by the complicated times we’re in of economic inequality and ICE and so forth. Why do you think something like dance is even more important in these hard times?
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: I think it just like nicely connects to our beloved emotion, awe, because I think it puts you in a perspective. It reminds you the existence of other communities, like there’s someone dancing next to you, and you might have compassion for it, or you might feel grateful that you’re in that community, or like they’re just like so many people showed up for this event, and then you’re a part of it, and then, like, feel that you are a part of a larger whole, which is very central to the emotion of Awe. So through all those like, elicited emotions. I believe it provides more opportunity, like, opens the gate for opportunities to experience all those, like self transcendent emotions, which in itself actually ties to a lot of like, pro social outcomes.
DACHER KELTNER: Yep, better trust and reduced loneliness. You know, when you think about caregivers like Magdalene, and she’s working really hard and as a parent, and has very little time, and that’s just true of caregivers, you know, they’re just have very few moments in the day to do the kinds of things that help us with such stress. From your research, what are some really accessible ways to help regulate stress, even if you don’t have a lot of time?
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: I think during the moment of like frustration, taking a moment and breathing and just like moving together, can actually be a really nice shared experience. Improve your physiology, increase your connection, and in itself, is just like a very sweet moment that you can have with your like, child. And in our work, on the physiological level, it also we know that touch or like other things, just like communicates that presence, the support of other person. So I think just if you’re brave enough, just like stopping and just like moving with your loved ones. And dance, in itself, is an expressive art. It has multiple modalities of emotion, expression and recognition. You share laughter, you look at someone else’s face and then try to, like, understand what they’re like feeling. Dance is such a playground, and then provides you such a playground with like, multiple modalities of like emotion, like with your body too. Like you have this like, wonderful work showing how people express their emotions through body, voice, face, like it has all in it.
DACHER KELTNER: One of the great things about bringing scientists onto the show like you Özge, is you provide a lens onto our experiences that we capture in our guests. And Magdalene had this amazing recounting of an experience of dance, and it was so deep, and she just dances throughout the day, and a song that she heard sparked her to gently sway. And then, you know, while she was just swaying, she started to cry, and it seemed like this deep release of emotion. How would you make sense of that from the science of dances perspective?
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: Emotion regulation, and it can be like, triggered by music can be triggered by like dance. I think dance, through those movements, provides a gate for emotional awareness, which in itself, like we know from other literature, that like being able to understand the emotion that you’re feeling, being able to label it actually helps you regulate it better.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah, one of the messages I take from you is like, man, just get out and do some simple things where you’re moving, you’re dancing, you’re sharing movement with others.
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: We are very often sitting or like, doing what life mandates us, like walk to go to work, sit down and for eight hours and then go home and cook and just sleep. So, like, all those like things are, like a really top down processes, right cognition to the body. So what I propose is switch that direction a little bit, like make your body move and to help your cognition a little bit. And it is actually simpler than you think. Like, for example, if you have your significant other at home, I think it is just easy to pause for a minute and then share a moment of connection, like mutual movement, because, like, we started mimicking each other. Since we were born, we started, like, mimicking our mother and stuff. So mimic shared moments of dance at home. Maybe, or maybe, if you’re like a teacher, let’s say that if you want to create group cohesion in it, just be bold and then, like, remind people that this shared movement actually can create great bonds and connection in the community if we can go bold and then actually, like, propose it in workplaces too. Like, it can also be like, a super tiny three minute activity, and I think we should normalize it.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah, I know you’re busy doing research and various things, and I wanted to thank you for telling us about the power of dance and movement and how simple it can be, and yet good for the mind and body. And thanks for stopping by.
DR ÖZGE UGURLU: Thank you so much for inviting me. I hope people can take a few lines from this and maybe like dance more
DACHER KELTNER: Studies show that tuning into our bodies rather than pulling away, helps us regulate stress and feel more grounded.
Jenny Little: When I first started the practice, I was like, wait, you want me to focus on the stress and where I feel it really. I don’t want to, you know, I’m going to push it away. And then the more I did it, there started to be a shift.
DACHER KELTNER: On our next episode, we’ll explore the science of embodying uncertainty and guide you through a practice to try for yourself.
Thanks for joining us on The Science of Happiness. Our research assistants are Emily Brower and Dasha Zerboni. Our producer is Truc Nguyen. Our sound designer is Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios. Our executive producer is Shuka Kalantari. I’m Dacher Keltner. Have a great day.
