I don't know about the rest of you but I was giving Lou cyber ^5s today after he refused another one of Miss Iyanla's silly exercises. Thank god Lou hasn't lost himself in dealing with the "process" and while he's learning new "tools"

::sidebar:: everybody should take a shot everytime one of the SO Guests uses the word "tool"..Just for fun. Let's see how wasted we get in the hour.

I though that exercise, while it had analogous meaning, was not entirely NECESSARY for the couples to go through sludging themselves in grape jelly or whatever so that the wives would know their husbands loved them. I can't say it enough: Kudos to Lou. I am so tired of all the house guests (past and present) simply turning into little sheep in the presense of a life coach. I mean if someone on the street suggested some of that crap you would most certainly look at them as if they had just fallen out of the sky..

I wanna see more Lou and Iyanla.. She gets mad when she can't make he do whatever she wants. She's been relagated to spouting her own chants about "doing the work". How the other guest can help from breaking out into spontaneous laughter, I'll never understand.

• RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,kittywink, 03:28 AM, 03-09-06
• RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,SOfan0221, 07:19 AM, 03-09-06
  • RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,mistyrose52, 10:17 AM, 03-09-06
    • RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,justfionablue, 10:54 AM, 03-09-06
      • RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,sillybear, 02:52 PM, 03-09-06
• RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,kawyar, 03:47 PM, 03-09-06
  • RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,speechprof, 03:57 PM, 03-09-06
  • RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,piper2, 04:04 PM, 03-09-06
• RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,Mama_Pita, 04:06 PM, 03-09-06
  • RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,VelvetElegance, 09:04 PM, 03-09-06
• RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,EMTBGRL, 11:34 PM, 03-09-06
  • RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,cheesecake, 11:28 PM, 03-10-06
    • RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,Pixeltalk, 02:10 PM, 03-13-06
• RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,JustBNMe, 04:53 AM, 03-11-06
  • RE: Iyanla's success in reaching new heights of ridiculousness,Pixeltalk, 02:15 PM, 03-13-06

Ha Ha, I agree with you. If these life coaches had a house full of men and not women, they'd rebel against every silly exercise they would try to make them do. The women that stay in the house are a bunch of wussies.

Lou marches to his own drum beat, and when he tells Iyanla that he absolutely will not do one of her exercises that he thinks is stupid I'll give him kudos that he is not mean or nasty about refusing. He just states his case and how he feels some of her exercises will not help him. And I don't blame him, I wouldn't want to be smeared in gunk to get some sybolic message.

Having said that, I was surprised that Lou and his wife also got the trip along with the other three couples.

It seemed as if Lou and Iyanla bumped heads all the time, so how does that make him work hard to improve his marriage? Kind of strange.

I agree that Lou is the rebel of the group, and I'm sure he gets a lot more flack about it then we see on screen! You can almost see the smoke coming out of IV's eyes anytime he turns down one of her 'univeral' suggestions! LOL.

He has his own ideas of how this is supposed to work, and I think it's great that he doesn't go along with a lot of mumbo jumbo hoocky koochy crap that serves as nothing but a space-taker!! When it comes to the bottom line, you know he loves his wife just as much as those other guys, if not more!

I understand the concept of trying something "different" to shake things up and get you out of your comfort zone. It can possibly trigger new emotions or allow people to tap into emotions that have been buried. Okay, we get that. But I agree that many of the Life Coaches' exercises are just ridiculous experiments at the HG's expense. They are either just trying to get ratings or are simply not qualified to come up with reasonable and appropriate exercises that would actually help people. What I want to know is: Do the HG's have to sign a contract that says they will not refuse to do any LC "exercises" while on the show? Does anyone know???

Good point I wonder that myself.

I think the laughter gets edited out!

I was hooting with derision too at that stupid exercise. Does anyone here make their own wine? Doesn't that mash smell really bad at first until it ages into wine? I wouldn't want to be rubbing that all over myself either.

Lou was very right in saying that he felt distracted by rubbing wine dregs all over his arms and that it really didn't serve the purpose. Instead of applauding that Lou was "speaking his own truth", IV got mad at him and picked on the more malleable sheep, his wife.

Even the platitudes that she was doling out to Simon lounging on the dock... what the heck was she rambling about?

Maybe the wine fumes went to her head...?

Well I can assure you the laughter's pretty LOUD at my house. Seriously, this "cleasing" ceremony, although certainly symbolic to some degree, didn't need to use the nasty crushed grapes. And you're right. The smell is horrific. Why not just use "water" as they have in the past to indicate healing and purity. Just when I think SO may be getting some of it's integrity back, Iyanla comes up with something like this. Kuddos to Lou. He said what all of us were thinking.

>I think the laughter gets edited
>out!

Me too! I can't imagine standing around watching others doing these things, and not laughing.

>I was hooting with derision too
>at that stupid exercise.
>Does anyone here make their
>own wine? Doesn't that
>mash smell really bad at
>first until it ages into
>wine?

You mean the 'must'? ;)
I would love to smell it again. I moved away from the 'real' wine country, up in Sonoma Co. years ago. Was working in a winery for years. I really miss ALL of the smells around it, tho it does take time to get used to it. Hmmmmmm, fond memories.

>Even the platitudes that she was
>doling out to Simon lounging
>on the dock... what the
>heck was she rambling about?

That was ridiculous. IMO he's already gone from that relationship. He doesn't seem to 'get it' as much as others. And it was kinda 'odd' that IV was 'treating him like her own son', saying things to him she wished she'd said to her son. That wasn't fair....who's getting the 'help' here, Simon or IV??
Seems like she wanted to 'purge' some of her own guilt thru him.

>Maybe the wine fumes went to
>her head...?

Methinks she was lying down in the winery itself, getting all the CO2, (I think it is, can't remember), into her heeeed.

piper

I thought the same thing, cause if I were Lou, i would have told her the same thing. Pouring red wine all over me would serve what purpose exactly??? and she did that with new lisa too with the sludge pool, I would have told her to jump in it and walk away. Her exercises are totally ridiculous!!!

I struggle for the words to accurately depict Miss Iyanla's actions and to use Rhonda's favorite word, PROJECTIONS!!! There I said it..Does anybody else notice the archetype of the mother that Iyanla seems to portray? I mean that scene on the dock told me everything I needed to know. I wonder if Iyanla is using women at the same time the women are there to use the coaches. Iyanla clearly has some complicated relationships with her children. One can't spend much time with her without really feeling the maternal vibe coming from her. Iyanla's signature move is to compell a houseguest to sob in her lap. Remember Rachel from last year. How many times did she actually have Rachael sit on her lap. That grown woman of size stratteling Iyanla lap like some kind of child. Right down to how she rocks them and rubs their back...WTH is that about and don't even get me started on that circus she created with Kim laying on the floor while Iyanla tries to induce her into some sort of regressive tantrum. I was left speechless with this.

Now that I think about it, this might be worthy of it's own thread: Iyanla and her archetypical role as the mother of the Starting Over house

I would do more than laugh. I might break out into an interpretive dance and shout, "I am living fearlessly today! I am not being Iyanla's SHEEP! Good for ME!" and ask others to join in. I am with you 100%. I am really OVER the whole "Do what I SAY. I MEAN IT!"

I too agree that Iyanla is ridiculous in her exercises. But I also noticed that Iyanla does not do any of those messy kind of exercises with the black woman of the SOH. I feel she is very prejudice. She does show favoritism to the black woman or couple of the SOH. She has an oppertunity to show this country that there can be no prejudiceum. But IMO she fuels it.

Making poor Jill tote around all that baggage was pretty harsh IMO

IV has alot of issues and she likes to act like she is so together. I noticed how she uses water and magic potions on others but she uses stinky, icky stuff on those she doesn't like and to those who don't do her bidding. Look at Christina and her mom using water with flowers in them to wash their hands in their cleansing ceremony and Lisa 2 and her magic potion she had to sip. Then poor Lou who has issues about getting slimey and icky has to clean out a filthy car, have fermenting wine crap slathered on him etc. Notice how IV let Michael just dab the wine slime on himself and his girlfriend yet IV made Lou have it poured on him and rubbed into his skin? IV is off her rocker and certainly has her favorites

I agree JustB. How does making Lou do something he is almost phobic about accomplish anything? As he said, it just distracts him from the issue at hand. Why not just have them wash in rose petal water instead of actually having to wash yechh off of each other?

It seems that with Iyanla it is all about obedience. She can't stand it when somebody won't follow her orders, and always says, "I think Lou's resistance will hurt his marriage" or something like that. Well, you knew he would have a problem with filth, so why make him go there? Nobody else had to do things that disgusted them. It was too bad, also, because I got the feeling Lou's wife's feelings were hurt because he wasn't willing to do it "for her."

Maybe Iyanla was getting "free samples" from the winery!