Move-Assure Dance for Mental Wellbeing

Welcome to Move-Assure our Dance for Mental Wellbeing Programme, created and presented by Dame Darcey Bussell and Dr Peter Lovatt.

Dance is fantastic for mental wellbeing, scientific research shows that it helps to build confidence, improves relationships, and our thinking skills.

Dancing also lifts people’s mood and, of course, it improves physical wellbeing too.

In our Dance for Mental Wellbeing programme, each of our 60 sessions is about 20 minutes long – long enough to help you feel great, and short enough to fit into your day.

We recommend that you do three sessions per week and that you keep dancing with us for 20 weeks.

This is a graded dance for wellbeing programme, which means that at the beginning we’ll teach you some new dances and then, as the programme progresses and you’ve learnt the routines, we’ll jump straight in and get groovy.

In total you’ll learn 17 dances, which have been inspired by different cultures and styles of movement – we’re not experts in every style and we hope you enjoy their flavour.

Our Move-Assure Dance for Mental Wellbeing sessions are available on-line – which means you can do them anytime, anywhere.

Did you know, that at the end of each session, Darcey and Peter chat about the links between science and dancing – in a feature we’ve called ‘Did you know?’.

The programme also includes 20 weekly wellbeing tips, to help support your mental wellbeing, a mental wellbeing quiz and some nuggets of science in The Science Bit.

Our Move-Assure Team consists of Darcey Bussell who has created the dances and music, Lindsey Lovatt, who created the mental wellbeing content and Peter Lovatt who provides the scientific evidence-base.

We are so grateful for the support of a team of expert mental health clinicians, focus-group members and experts by experience who have helped us develop this great programme.

Our Dance for Mental Wellbeing programme is for anyone who wants to improve their mental wellbeing through movement and dance.

So join us today, in our Move-Assure Dance for Mental Wellbeing Programme.

Course Content

Welcome from Dame Darcey Bussell & Dr Peter Lovatt

Your Introduction to the Move-Assure Dance for Mental Wellbeing Programme Sample Lesson

Disclaimer Sample Lesson

The Mental Wellbeing Quiz

Week 1

Week 1 Session 1 Sample Lesson

Week 1 Session 2

Week 1 Session 3

Week 1 Wellbeing Tip Sample Lesson

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

1 of 5

About Instructor

Dr Peter Lovatt

Peter is an award-winning university lecturer with over 25 years of teaching experience. He started out as a teaching assistant at Stirling University in 1993, where he ran seminars on Cognitive Psychology and had his first experience of marking coursework. This was followed by a Psychology Teaching Fellowship at Essex University where he taught Psychology undergraduates, as he completed his PhD. At the same time Peter was also involved with teaching at the Centre for Continuing Education, which provided a range of open access courses for people to complete in the evenings and at weekends. Peter got his first full-time lectureship in 1996 in the Department of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, where he taught Cognitive Psychology and Research Methods. In 1998 he moved to the University of Cambridge, where he taught on the MA in Applied Linguistics and supervised PhD students in the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics (Faculty of English). From 2001-2003 Peter was a visiting Lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he taught the Psychology of Language to undergraduates, and from 2001 to 2004 he held the full-time post of Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Kingston University. In 2004 Peter moved to the University of Hertfordshire to take up the post of Reader in Psychology where, in 2008, he set up the Dance Psychology Lab and established a course in the Psychology of Performing Arts, which included lectures on Dance Psychology. In 2009 Peter’s teaching was Highly Commended in the Vice Chancellor’s Awards. From 2008 to 2019, Peter taught the Psychology of Performing Arts and Dance Psychology at every level of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching (from first year undergraduates to PhD candidates) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. In 2017 Peter started to teach Dance Psychology at the Royal Ballet School in London. Peter and Lindsey Lovatt co-founded Movement in Practice, and the Movement in Practice Academy, in 2020.

6 Courses

Move-Assure Dance for Mental Wellbeing

Course Content

About Instructor

Dr Peter Lovatt

Course Includes