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World Of Dance Briar Nolet Adventure

Hey guys! In this new part, I'm gonna do the summary of Briar Nolet's adventure on World Of Dance, from her 1rst performance to her last! I decided to follow the flow of an Interview of her that she did for Popsugar.uk. Enjoy it! 

1- Qualifiers

Briar Nolet started World Of Dance on March 3rd dancing on Billie Eilish's "You Should See Me in a Crown". In the intro package, she delivered her epilepsy story. She has never talked about it before so it was really emotional as a fan to hear what she went through and how she managed to hide it on screen, on The Next Step. 

Here's Briar's full story that she shared for the first time to womenshealthmag.com: 

Ever since I took my first dance lesson when I was seven years old, picking up choreography always came easily to me. 

But, a few months after I turned 16, I started having these moments where—in the middle of a dance—my mind would just go blank for a second, forgetting the choreography. At the same time, my body would almost jerk. I started calling them "blankouts," but I didn't think much of them until one hip hop class.

I ran into the studio 30 minutes late and snuck to the back of the room. I figured that would be the best place to go unnoticed while I caught up on all the choreography I'd missed. But I couldn't focus on the teacher's instructions and kept having blackouts.

When we did the dance routine as a group, I forgot all the choreography, and my mind was in a blur. I saw my right hand shaking and couldn't stop it. A few seconds passed as I stood there, unable to control my right hand.

The next thing I remember is waking up on the dance studio floor, surrounded by all my dance teachers and other students.

They told me I'd had a seizure and fallen unconscious before I even hit the floor. I'd never been unconscious before, not even a faint, so it was a complete shock. While I was unconscious, the dance teachers had called my parents, who came running into the studio as soon as they could. It was all kind of a blur, so I don't remember too much—just the feeling that I didn't know what was happening, or why.

After that, my parents and I saw a few pediatric neurologists to figure out what could've caused the seizure. They gave me some neurological tests, and they all came back clear. The doctors said there was nothing was wrong with my mind, and I wanted to believe them. Why wouldn't I? Maybe, they said, it was my nutrition, or maybe I just overworked myself. By the time I was 16, I was dancing 30 to 40 hours a week and acting on a Canadian TV show, The Next Step. So I just tried to balance everything out and hoped that would fix it—whatever "it" was.

But over the next two years, I kept having seizures every few months. After my first one, I knew how I would feel before having a seizure, so I knew when one was coming on, and that was really only in the dance studio. I could walk, talk, and even drive without a problem, but it seemed like every time I tried to dance—the one thing I loved more than just about anything else—I had a seizure.

I knew that learning choreography was triggering these seizures, but I kept putting myself into these situations because I just couldn't imagine my life without dance. I didn't want to give it up. But then, my seizures just started to get worse. I began to have the blackouts when I was just writing really fast or talking really fast. Trying to turn a thought into a physical action was a trigger.

During these two years, a psychologist diagnosed me with anxiety, believing that was what triggered my seizures. Honestly, I didn't think I was stressed enough to make myself have seizures. In my heart, I knew this wasn't causing them—but I trusted my doctors. They talked me through how to stop a seizure from happening if I was in an anxious mindset, like noticing the smell of the room to take my mind off of what was making me anxious.