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The Science of Joy: How DJing and "Longevity Raves" are Redefining Aging

  • 12 hours ago
  • 22 min read
Four women pose joyfully in a dimly lit room with DJ equipment. One wears headphones, others embrace. Colorful light trails swirl around.
Image Source: Image provided courtesy of Tina Woods.

What if the secret to a longer, healthier life wasn't found in a lab, but on the dance floor? In this episode of Signal Shift, I chat to Tina Woods, also known as DJ Technotic. At age 60, Tina became a techno DJ and co-founder of the Longevity Rave movement. This was after just a decade after another big pivot into a high-stakes career in health tech.


Tina shares her "thunderbolt" epiphany post COVID and how learning to mix music during a grueling surgery recovery became a catalyst for biological age reduction. We dive into the "JoyScore" experiment, the power of 120-130 BPM house music to heal, and why "intergenerational mixing" is the ultimate cure for the modern loneliness epidemic. Tina’s story is a masterclass in maintaining an open mindset and proving that "retirement" is an antiquated concept that serves no purpose in a 100-year life.



Where to Find DJ Tina Technotic:



The Late-Blooming DJ: A Story of Reinvention

In her 50s, Tina shifted from a traditional career to founding Collider Health. Her journey into the world of techno music began as a form of personal healing and curiosity.

  • Healing Through Music: Faced with foot surgery and a long recovery, Tina decided to learn music mixing as a way to stay connected to the "joy and energy" she felt while dancing.

  • Defying Timelines: Tina’s story challenges antiquated ideas about retirement. She is part of the of a small group of female DJs who receive widespread recognition.

  • Longevity Rave: She co-founded the Longevity Rave movement, which held its first event in East London in July 2024 to explore how music and movement foster connection and mental well-being.


Longevity Rave and the "Blue Zone" Fundamentals

Despite her deep involvement in AI and longevity tech—having authored the book Live Longer with AI—Tina emphasizes that the most effective health drivers are remarkably simple.

  • Ancestral Wisdom: Tina advocates for the "fundamentals your grandmother told you": unprocessed food, clean air, sleep, and time with loved ones.

  • Tackling Social Isolation: She identifies social isolation and loneliness as the biggest drivers of poor health crises today.


The Intergenerational Mix

A core tenet of the Longevity Rave is the intentional mixing of generations to create a unique "humanity that ties all of us together".

  • Mutual Exchange: Tina performs with a co-DJ, Yukari, who is less than half her age. She believes that separating generations into "silos" is a loss for society.

  • Mentorship and Learning: Younger people find hope in seeing that a "great life" continues well into one's 60s, while Tina finds constant inspiration and new perspectives from her younger peers.



The JoyScore Experiment: Science of Sound

Tina is currently exploring the "new frontier" of how sound and rhythm impact human biology through the JoyScore experiment.

  • Healing Frequencies: Research suggests that music between 120 and 130 BPM (typical of house and melodic techno) can particularly improve well-being by connecting with human biological rhythms.

  • Group Synchrony: New experiments are monitoring brainwave activity and heart rates in "rave" scenarios to see how groups synchronize and benefit from collective dancing.

  • Evidence-Based Design: The goal of the experiment is to use AI to find patterns in this data, which could eventually influence the design of hospitals, hotels, spas, and home environments.


*Disclaimer: The text in this post is AI-generated from an original video podcast - applicable data sources, references and/or the episode transcript are provided below.


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Episode Transcript:

Raakhee: (00:00)

Hello and welcome to Signal Shift with me, Raakhee We've spoken about midlife academies, lifelong learning, the Don't Die movement and other longevity movements. We've spoken about the hundred year life and just rethinking the entire concept of retirement. But covering all these concepts from a million theoretical angles is one thing and to speak with someone who is truly living by new rules.


Creating new rules rather about their life beyond age, beyond societal expectations. Someone who is not burdened by antiquated ideas. Well, you know, that's something else altogether. So today we are speaking with a very special guest, Tina Woods, also known as DJ Technotic, a 60 something techno DJ and longevity entrepreneur. Tina, a very, very warm welcome.


Tina: (00:53)

Well, thank you very much for having me. Looking forward to our conversation.


Raakhee: (00:56)

Absolutely. more about Tina. In her mid-50s, Tina discovered a passion for techno music and the power of music to heal post-surgery. She considers herself a late-blooming DJ with a unique story that defies conventional timelines. And her story has been covered by the Sunday Times, The Guardian, Business Insider, and many others. And I think it's deeply resonated with a lot of people, whether it's using music for longevity,


Whether it's just creative work opportunities in your 60s or being part of a small percentage of female DJs who actually receive recognition. According to DJane Mag, only 15 % of the positions in the DJ Mag top 100 DJs in 2025 belonged to women, only 15%. So Tina's passion isn't just being a DJ and defying age-related stereotypes, but she believes in the power of music to aid in our quest for well-being.


She is the co-founder of Longevity Rave, a movement that brings together scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and music lovers to explore how music and collective movement can foster human connection and mental well-being. At Signal Shift, one of our goals is to help people rethink ideas around purpose, fulfillment, and traditional timelines. once again, Tina, a very warm welcome and I'm excited to get into learning about your story.


Tina: (02:21)

Absolutely. yeah, far away.


Raakhee: (02:24)

What is the impetus to make this shift in your life? Like, it's almost like you had a story before, right? And then there was kind of a story after and tell us a little bit about that in your journey.


Tina: (02:33)

I mean, think ultimately it's probably a story of just sort of finding out really about yourself and what really sort of makes you tick. And we spend our lifetimes trying to find that out. Some of us find it sooner rather than later.


And then you have that part of your life where you're basically very, very focused on anything but yourself because you're raising kids, you've got a family, and you're trying to develop your career, whatever it is that you're doing. And I think one of the things that I recognized was part of my story is that you hit your 50s, and you are faced with this question, gosh, I'm probably more than half of my life unless.


Unless all this longevity science really starts to kick in and we're able to achieve well beyond 100 years, which is obviously starting to become very possible now. And I kind of just found myself at a time in my life where could actually do things a little bit differently. And just started on that journey about 10 years ago when I jettisoned my previous career. I started with something very, very different on my own.


Started a gig called Collider Health. I was able to do that just because I'd sort of done the hard bit about rearing my three sons I was sort of entering the menopause, which is often a very difficult time for a lot of women.


Kids are starting to leave home. You're going through that kind of hormonal stuff. And you're sort of wrestling with this question, like, who am I? And what's my life going to be when I've spent so much time raising a family and being a wife and the career and all that sort of stuff? You talk about retirement. I hate that word because I don't think I will ever retire. I mean, think what keeps me going is my innate curiosity and my need to learn things in my life.


And I just saw this next phase as a great way of relooking my journey and where I'm going to go. I'm not seeing this as the end and putting my bags away and thinking, OK, I'll put my feet up and then that's it and wait for death to happen. It's absolutely just not my personality and my character. And I just became quite excited about it.


So I guess one thing led to another, and I got my gig going, Collider Health, and I started getting involved in very, very interesting projects. And I started to just really start to get into the groove of finding out what really is driving my purpose and meaning in life and what I really want to do


Coming out of COVID lockdown, I went dancing one night with a couple of And I just realized that it was almost like a lightning bulb moment. And it was more like a thunderbolt when this whole kind of power of just the joy and the music and the dancing, it just sort of made me realize. And I just had this epiphany that dancing music was going to be a really important part of my life. And it was sort of, it kind of just made me feel alive again and made me feel whole again. It kind of made me feel that excitement and that energy from my younger days. So what I did is I started going back to my dance classes again, my Zumba class, and started going dancing a lot and then got really interested in the music and started going to a lot of clubs and started getting much closer to the music and started to realize that my initial passion, you know, I love world music, I love Afro house, love Latin music.


And then it was actually right before I hit 60, I realized that there is this thing that I realized I had to take on and deal with, which was my feet, because for all sorts of reasons, I mean, it was it was much worse than Bunyan's, mean, because I'd left it for so long and my feet were getting more and more deformed, actually, to the point where I was getting a lot of a lot of I wouldn't notice it when I was dancing, but literally as soon as I got out of the club, I feel I could barely walk to the bus stop.


So I just realized I had to just get this sorted. my next worry was my recovery period, which could have been anything from four to six to even 12 months to kind of go back to normal. And I just thought that is just going to be crucifying for me. I cannot sit still.


As I was just thinking through how I was going to cope with this foot surgery, Yukari who was my dancing partner, and I kind of said, listen, we're gonna have to, I'm not gonna be able to dance for a while. I don't know how I'm gonna cope. And I was thinking like, maybe I should learn how to mix music just to kind of keep me close to the music. And at least it's something I can do while my feet are up in bed recuperating.


And then she had told me that she was thinking about DJing. I said, well, why don't we just learn how to mix music together? And then we can have fun with it. I'll have something to focus on. I can learn. And then we can focus on what we can do together as DJs, as new DJs.


Raakhee: (07:02)

Longevity is the other big passion for you. You track all kinds of data about your health. And DJing is making you younger, as you have said. Tell us more about


Tina: (07:13)

I was invited to write a book on Live Long with AI. I had become quite involved in the whole world of tech and starting to get very involved in the whole world of longevity science and technology with a bit of serendipity and good luck, but also just being open to new opportunities. I, wrote this book called Live Longer with AI. So I had done a lot of research, had been speaking to a lot of people, longevity experts. people who are at the fringe and the of the cutting edge, people who wanted to, who are still looking for this sort of elixir of youth to live forever.


And I was really struck by the fundamentals, you know, which we still come back to. And now we have growing science, which still showing the fundamentals are the most important driver that are available to all of us. You don't have to be rich and have the knowledge necessarily. You just have to do what your grandmother told you.


And that's the simple things in life. It kind of goes back down to, and some people may have heard of the Blue Zones, which are around the world where people tend to live a very long, life, past 100. And it is the fundamentals of what your grandmother told you. It's about spending time with your friends and family. It's about breathing in clean air. It's about getting your sleep. It's about living healthily, which often means eating food off the land that's unprocessed or very low-processed food, not eating too much junk food, and just being happy and fulfilled.


And this is where you're living in tightly knit communities, where age is venerated, where you tend to live in very close-knit families and communities. It's kind of like going back to our ancestral heritage and history and evolutionary history. You're kind of, we're animals, we're tribal creatures. We have a deep human need for very, very simple things. And this is where being connected in your tribe and feeling loved and looked after and being able to love back, it's a kind of a collective thing, or actually...really, really important.


I'd always kind of thought about this idea of longevity rave. I just thought it would be quite fun. And I thought it would work. We had our first longevity rave on July the 6th, 2024, the Love Shack, which is a very groovy place in East London. And we were amazed by A, how many people wanted to come and it was a huge success. I mean, it was in many ways terrifying because I was very nervous. Obviously I was very new to DJing.


My co-DJ and co-founder of Longevity Rave, my dancing partner, Yukari who's less than half my age. Yukari was a little bit further ahead because she had been DJing a little bit more than me. Now, of course, this is a very, very pro DJ now.


But we had a great event and it caught the imagination. People came. The media caught wind of it. They were fascinated by the fact that I had learned how to DJ at the age of 60. And we kind of started just getting a lot of attention. And ever since then, we've just been doing longevity raves and building up our networks, building up creating environments for health.


Our choices and our behaviors are very influenced by environments. But it's also about really tapping into the intrinsic motivations of why people want to live a longer life, a healthier life. And that's about your motivation and what drives you. what I've seen in the music context and in dancing, and certainly now that I'm DJing, it's just when you are in that environment where you're connected with people and you're feeling the rhythm and the beat and the music.


And there's obviously a whole science around that. It just connects your mind, body, and soul. it's certainly been a huge factor in why I have kept healthy. And there's a whole story about why it's been huge part of my biological age and reduction. And I've got a lot of data points, and there's some stories in media written about that.


I'm not doing any of this fancy stuff. I'm doing the stuff, the Blue Zone stuff. I'm like eating well, getting a lot of exercise.


I'm spending a lot more time with younger people. And of course I have three sons in their 20s and I've seen the impact of the digital world on the younger generations and also across all age groups living behind screens and not sort of living life in all the randomness and the chaos and the serendipity of life, which we used to rely on in the old days. Certainly I did. I would never have met my husband on a dating app. Let me tell you, I didn't even know myself in my 20s, let alone the sort of man I was going to fall in love with. And he was not what I expected at all. So it's that sort of, so I think we just need to bring people back in real life.


What really drives a huge part of our health, which is that emotional mental health part. And hopefully will help address this epidemic that we have with social isolation and loneliness, which is, think, and is, as the evidence is showing, the biggest driver of poor health and crises in health and especially in younger people. And just needs a lot more focus and attention. And this part of a much bigger paradigm of, this again is a huge scientific experiment that I'm part of called the Human Exposome Project, which is about the exposome factors that are driving health and now trying to really understand at an individual level, you know, how poor air quality, how psychosocial stress, how the food that we're eating, our lack of movement in our lives, you know, the lack of intergenerational spaces, sense of community, all the things that we're not doing what the Blue Zones did.


And that, course, is where the JoyScore experiment will have relevance, not just in the context of longevity rate, which is obviously one small use case, but how we'll have applications in everything like, you know, hospitality, housing, know, experiences, beauty. You know, what is the joy that we need to find in our lives? Where are we going to find that? What's going to drive us as human beings? What's going to drive us to be connected more closely, which is what we need?


Burning Man, they've been really interested in the Joyscore experiments. So working with them because they're looking at this whole concept of, you know, the threat to humanity of AI. So how do we actually really understand what, you know, what will protect and preserve our humanity?


it's kind of come full circle in a funny sort of way.


Raakhee: (12:46)

A lot of people, especially women, are deterred from pursuing the wild, wonderful ideas they have because they have families, because they've played this role for so long. And so even when your children are grown up and your family's independent, you you're typically, you prioritize them. And I think it's been amazing in the sense that you've had your family support.


And you've been able to navigate this all so beautifully. What made this easy for you as a family?


Tina: (13:18)

I convinced my husband to start coming out with me because he was wondering what the hell has happened to my wife. he just sort of started looking at all the fun that I was having and actually keeping really fit in the meantime, because of course it's all,


It's all self-reinforcing. It's a virtuous cycle, isn't it? You feel great, you want to do more, and then you're really excited and feel alive, and the physical, the physicality, and the mental, and the emotional, and the spiritual, it all, it all is part of it. And of course, I never stop exercising and all that sort of stuff. And so he started coming out with me.


The dancing has helped bring my husband and I much closer together because we have so much fun. just from a whole kind of everything, the electricity and the passion and the feeling that we have when we're out and the people that we're meeting and all that sort of stuff. And it's something that we share. And of course, our social networks have have increased and we're feeling great and we still do our mountains and we still do all that sort of stuff.


Raakhee: (14:09)

Your co-founder and DJ partner is in her late 20s. Does an age gap ever play any kind of a role or impact that partnership? Or is it simply irrelevant?


Tina: (14:21)

And that's kind of what we're really experimenting with Longevity Rave. It's across all generations. It's not about, the young and old should mix together and be intergenerational. No, what we're saying is that without even having to tell you, it is really great mixing everyone up. And it just brings an electricity and a randomness and a beauty about just the humanity that ties all of us together. And it's hip and it's cool. And it's great fun. It's a wonderful thing to do. And so that's kind of what we're doing. In fact, our last longevity rave we had just two days ago.


Just after I turned 62, by the way, and my co DJ just turned 28 today or 29 actually. you know, and we had a great mix. was actually true to what we had said it would be. We looked at the audience breakdowns across all age groups and it was really fun, really cool, really hip


I have incredible conversations with people. And I always recognize in myself, but also when I'm speaking to younger people, who are often out there wanting to meet who they're going to love and find one day, because we are all looking for love.


And I say, listen, we're all on this journey. I have been on this journey. And I'm really lucky, because I actually did find the man who I am deeply in love with. And it keeps on growing. he's with me now. And we are not young. And we are still having a really great life. And you will get there. It's part of the journey of life. It can be really tough in your 20s. You're finding out who you are. And everyone else is finding out who they are. And it's not an easy time.


And I think that's where the intergenerational mix is a really beautiful thing without having to force it. It's kind of like we used to have that in a way that wasn't forced, and it was beautiful. And I think let's try and avoid the silo-ization that keeps on happening in our society. So I think that's the beauty of what we're trying to recreate in


longevity rave and obviously the science and hopefully the science and the evidence will show that and convince others who need more convincing maybe, the one with the big pockets and the people who make the rules.


Raakhee: (16:35)

I feel like that's definitely something not everyone is talking about, which is kind of the intergenerational mix, right? And how much we all have to learn from each other, right? There's something one younger can learn from somebody who's older, vice versa.


Tina: (16:50)

I learn something new every day from people much younger than myself. and you know, it's that mutual exchange. So, yeah.


Raakhee: (16:59)

Yeah, yeah. I I love that your partner and your DJ partner have such an age disparity. It's amazing. And it just shows, right? It's really the music that's bringing you together. You know, we aren't that different from each other and we have so much to learn from each other, which I think is so, powerful.


I think the word retirement will hopefully fall away in a decade's time.


Tina: (17:20)

It's a terrible word.


Raakhee: (17:22)

It's totally redundant, It serves no purpose any longer, right? It's useless. So that was great to kind of hear that echo there. And I think it so interesting about your story and what I'm hearing, which I hope I'm any... I think you used this word before, but exhilarating. know, DJing, dancing, exhilarating. And that's a feeling that people lose sometimes in their 30s, sometimes in their 40s. It's age irrelevant. It's just...


How exhilirated do we feel how often? Do you think that's part of that secret, right? Like purpose as you spoke about and the why, but then that feeling of exhilaration.


Tina: (18:03)

Well, I so I guess sort of what I have found, and some people find it sooner than I, I mean, you know, and this is part of the journey that we're all on. But yes, when you do something that you really feel sings to you deeply inside, you know, at all levels, and I think if you find the right path for you, that is something that is just, it is exhilarating.


It is, you know, and I think I've just got more and more to learn about that path. I mean, that's what also makes it exhilarating. It doesn't just stop with an aha moment. It's like, wow, you can take this further and further and further and then you can share it, you know, and that is the beauty about and this is why the dancing and the DJing now, because you are sharing your energy and your feeling with others and you're also receiving from others and it catalyzes and it kind of grows, and that is obviously very exhilarating.


All I can say is that I'm probably the most healthy I've ever been. And that, of course, gives you the energy. And that gives you the fuel to keep going.


And if you're connected at all levels of your meaning and purpose, then that is only going to give you more and more


Raakhee: (19:10)

Yeah, I'm just curious, did you, before you fell into this storyline, what were your other plans? What did you think you'd be doing?


Tina: (19:20)

I was convinced I was going to be a doctor. And I went to, I was pre-med and studied the science, studied genetics, and did the whole thing right until I realized, gosh, if I'm going to be a doctor, there's this whole predetermined path I have to follow for very long time. And I just realized it was just not for me. And then I went traveling. And then obviously, ended up doing all the things that I've done. for me, was more a case of, for me, creativity and being a sort of person who can always try out new things was a really important part of just who I am.


So I guess I just kind of followed that map for myself. I've always, and sometimes it is serendipity that kind of you need to have. You meet that person, or is that one thing that happens to you, And it's almost like you have opened yourself up to be available to seeing those opportunities. And I think this is where having an open versus a closed mindset is actually a very important thing. So I've always had quite an open mindset. And I think that has been part of my journey and how I've, and you know, and being open to new things.


So if you asked me two years ago, would I be even contemplating this DJ career as Tina Technotic at doing Longevity Rave? I just, would have, I would have laughed.


I just want to make people feel good. So I guess in the end, it's kind of tapping into what drives you as a person. What is your value system? What are the things that really make you you and really being true to yourself? So I think that's really what I'm doing. Being true to myself. I think people, they can see that I'm being true to myself. And that's why there's a resonance. And that's when I connect with other people. And then that obviously opens up new opportunities and new possibilities. And then you find that you go with it. And so I guess that's really what I've been doing.


Raakhee: (21:06)

There's some formula there, regards to your openness and that flexibility and adaptability that I think is going to be critical for everybody in the world we now inhabit. And we're going to need this more and more. And I think there's something there to longevity as well, that adaptability, flexibility, that openness.


And I think that's a very important thing for everyone to start to build and recognize in ourselves, you know, especially if we are talking about a hundred year life, there are no rules, right? You could find your life partner at 60. You could have an amazing career at 20 and maybe you want to travel the world at 55. You know, you can shuffle it around, right?


Tina: (21:48)

I think a lot of it is don't be afraid of the unknown because the unknown can be really exciting


Raakhee: (21:53)

I think the other thing that's really interesting with all of this is sound is becoming so important in medicine, in healing, and just in that arena. And yeah, what is the discovery around there? And I think it is healing to be, I mean,


Who doesn't feel amazing after a rave, after a concert, right? We all feel pretty good. And I'm sure it's sending all kinds of fantastic chemicals through us, which helps, right? But yeah, what is the frontier of, I guess, sound with regards to healing and longevity and wellness? And that might be a very big question, but as much as we can cover.


Tina: (22:31)

It's a big question. There's a lot of research already that's on this. And actually, Instagram has a lot of stuff happening about how sound improves, sound and music improves your health and well-being. And there's also a lot of talk about how it might even delay aging. I don't know if there's a lot of research that shows that. But this is some of the stuff that I'm trying to find out with JoyScore experiment because I've been looking at this research.


But there's definitely proven health and well-being benefits. mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff around showing that BPMs of certain ranges, between beats per minute of the music, between 120 and 130, has been particularly shown to improve your health and well-being because it's, and that's usually the range of sort of house music and sort of melodic techno, the kind of stuff that I play actually, and tech house and...


And it's because it's about connecting with rhythms. It's kind of like, and some of the lower BPMs, it's more around your heartbeat. And of course, if you go back to some of the other theories around, even like when embryos in the womb, they can hear the heartbeat of their mother. And then of course, there's a whole kind of connection with nature, the rhythms of the sea. And that's why we find it often quite peaceful when we hear the sort of rainfall and oceans and rivers and all that kind of stuff and winds.


That connection with the earth. and there's some interesting research and part of what we're obviously exploring in the JoyScore experiment and through collaborations with other partners, we're partnering with a... group called the Sound Nutritionists and of course that's their expertise. How can you heal to music? And so there are different types of rhythms. There's a more sort of the calming rhythms, more connect rhythms. So calm, it's more around how do you kind of more restorative and sort of more around recovery. And then the connect rhythms, which are a little bit more around that range that I spoke to earlier, where you're getting people to kind of connect on a dance floor, for example. And there's been some just recent research and I was part of this other experiment just recently with Emma Marshall, who wrote a book Music's Medicine, which I've read.


And she basically restored herself back to how she had a complete mental and physical breakdown. She was a former musician. And it was music that got, you know, she'd seen many doctors, none of them could help her. And she just realized that actually music was the healing that she needed. And so they're looking at some technologies around heart rate and how groups synchrony. tend to see, you know, groups sort of synchronizing around heart rate when you bring them together. So there's that whole, there's a lot of research.


And of course, now with the newer frontier technologies where you can use some of these more elaborate kind of, for example, the brainwave activity monitoring in the real life scenario like you get in the group dancing or a rave scenario. We're experimenting with those technologies so we can actually see through the brainwave activity what's actually happening to you as an individual, but also when you're synchronizing with other people.


And then of course you then marry that up and this is where the whizzy world of AI to look at patterns between all the data that you're collecting on us as individuals, both in the rave context, the actual rate, also pre and post to see what the long-term benefits might be across sort longitudinally on our health trajectory. So these are all the sorts of things that we're looking at in the JOYSCORE experiment. So there's a lot of research. Some of it's not as, I guess, as evidence-based as others that you're hearing about. And I think that's kind of the new research that we want to, and this is what we're trying to harness with the JOYSCORE experiment, to really look at that properly in an evidence-best way, marrying that up with all the other data points that we can collect on us as individuals, you know, how that and then what are the patterns that we can see across groups, which might influence how we design music, how we design experiences, clubs, hotels, spas, whatever it might be.


And even what you might listen to in the home or whatever. So these are all the things that are sort of what we're obviously going to be looking at in the future.


Raakhee: (26:07)

Tina, thank you so much. This was so inspiring.


To everybody listening, thank you so much for being here. Let us know what you're thinking about all of this. Leave your comments, your questions, and we will see you again next time. for now.



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