Designing the ESQK Embodied Well-Being Model: A Design-Based Research Study of AI-Augmented Creative Dance for Senior Women

The feminization of global ageing intensifies psychosocial risks for senior women, yet arts based interventions remain under-theorized. This Design-Based Research study constructed and refined the ESQK embodied well-being model through AI-augmented creative dance for women aged 60+. ESQK conceptualizes well-being as a recursive system of Acceptance (psychosocial safety), Connection (relational synchrony), Meaningfulness (embodied narrative coherence), and Expression (agency restoration). Across two cycles (n = 15 pilot; n = 52 implementation), participants completed a 12-week curriculum integrating ethical AI tools including posture feedback, rhythm adaptation, and movement visualization. Mixed-methods analysis combining WHO-5, UCLA Loneliness Scale, interviews, diaries, and video coding demonstrated significant improvements in well-being (d = 0.68, p < 0.001) and reduced loneliness (d = 0.54, p < 0.01). Findings further support a recursive activation pathway in which psychosocial safety enables relational synchrony, autobiographical integration, and embodied agency, with reciprocal reinforcement across constructs. By integrating feminist embodiment, enactivist theory, and ethical AI within DBR, this study advances a middle-range model specifying gender-sensitive embodied pathways of psychosocial flourishing and offers transferable design principles for technology-augmented arts-based health interventions.