Life Class with OPRAH

This is a guest blog from a very special friend and reader named Kirsten who was lucky enough to see Oprah Winfrey on her Life Class Tour in Toronto.

It only took 25 years but the big O finally made it to Oh Canada. And if you weren’t one of the 18000+ mostly women and a few men in Toronto to catch it, well she seemed to be feeling the Canadian love and promised to come north again soon!!

Oprah put on, not one but two, back to back live shows (the two largest single shows she’s ever done) for her life lesson tour, with a little help from some friends of course.

Dragon’s Den alumni and Calgarian philanthropist Brett Wilson was there to welcome the crowd… But I’m not sure why. That guy is everywhere, but he shouldn’t have been there!!!

Oprah’s spiritual mob-squad included Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, Iyanla Vanzant, and Bishop T.D. Jakes. Each self-help guru brought their A-game and the energy in the metro Toronto convention centre was palpable.

My mom and I had evening general admission rush seats (at $169 a pop) but considering Patricia (mom) is recovering from knee replacement surgery; rush isn’t in the vocab or the repertoire. So we moseyed along after waiting for an hour and a half (some people lined up at 9am for the 4pm show) to the hall where a lovely Oprah staff member quickly escorted us to the 18th row in the $400+ executive seats. Talk about gratitude….Thank-you Amber!

So now we had rock star seats, with a rock star view, and spiritual rock stars taking us on the journey of a lifetime! We were stoked and ready!

Now I have seen Deepak speak before and read many of his books so I was very excited to see what tricks the great master would pull from his bag of goodies. Don’t get me wrong D.C. was great… As always, but nothing I hadn’t heard or read from him before so I’m going to move onto some people who were in my awareness but I had never explored.

It was Iyanla that blew me away. That woman is all that AND a bag of spicy chips. She lit up the crowd as she spoke of having a vision and nurturing it as a seed and believing in it even when no one else could see that vision as fruitful.

Tony Robbins, who my mom seems to believe looks like my man Matt (which she shared midway so all I could think of was Matt telling me to “change my story“) is big energy. He filled that convention centre like a thunderstorm. His message really resonated: Our state of mind affects how we are in this world and we develop a story around our state to keep us from whatever it is we should be doing.  He spoke of tools and strategies to help change that so we can get in alignment with our higher calling.

The line I will never forget from the Bishop: “We are pregnant with potential and possibility. Go give birth!”

Then it was the time we’d been awaiting… 8500+ people were on their feet and Oprah, in an emerald-green dress and grey peep toe heels, waltzed on stage like the queen she is. You either love O or can’t stand her but the roar in the room made it clear this was a pretty solid showing of her Canadian fan base.

While I am longtime O admirer (c’mon she’s achieved some amazing things), I was not one of the shaking, crying, screaming women of which there were more than a few!

It was pretty cool to see her in the flesh considering how many afternoons I’ve spent with her in my living room. Oprah was gracious and complimentary to our Country and Toronto and was a lovely hostess for an hour live show. The theme was ‘Forgiveness’ and will be airing next week (the other Toronto show was about ‘Gratitude’ and will be the season finale on OWN in two weeks).

Oprah took questions from around the world via Skype, encouraged us to tweet and Facebook and read comments from the scrolling feed, and even chatted with the audience between commercials about everything from how she was enjoying Canada to how much her shoes were hurting her feet.

One by one she re-introduced the day’s speakers for the live show and examined ‘forgiveness’ using some guests including a 16-year-old boy from the audience, Joseph, who was having a hard time forgiving his dad for leaving his mom. It was pretty touching and as a child of divorced parents I felt he was brave, and the breakthrough he experienced was probably pretty profound.

Before I knew it the day was over… 6 hours later; Oprah threw off her shoes and walked off the stage into the first few rows of people to say hello. Yes I  rushed the stage FAB style! I managed to get in a ‘Thank-you for finally making it to Canada’ and in return got a ‘You’re very welcome’ from Oprah before she was swooped away by her contingency of bodyguards. I did manage to snap a few pics up close of the queen of TV and one of my greatest teachers.

Thanks for the show O and all the lessons that I’ll carry with me in this life; Now I get to add another pretty awesome life experience that I shared with my other greatest teacher; my Mom.

For all those who weren’t lucky enough to catch O this time…I shared an elevator with her Art Director and he told me the next class will be in session in Philly, St. Louis, and San Fran starting in September!

You don’t want to miss it for a second time!

Miss. Fab rah winfrey