Designing a Seamless VR Experience for Dance Movement Therapy

In our daily lives, we are exposed to various stressors, which, even in mild forms, can lead to serious health issues when prolonged. Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) uses movement as a form of psychotherapy to improve health and well-being, but traditional DMT often requires direct interaction with therapists and physical props, limiting its accessibility for daily use. To address this challenge, we propose Move & Journey, a VR application that enables DMT experiences by providing a virtual environment that dynamically adapts to users’ movements through visual, auditory, and tactile feedback. This system allows users to engage in DMT alone while maintaining therapeutic principles in an immersive virtual space. Our contributions include empirical insights from the development of dynamic feedback mechanisms for virtual therapy environments and the implementation of features that connect the therapeutic virtual environment and the real world seamlessly.