Twisted Yoga: how a search for enlightenment turned into a dangerous cult
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Practicing yoga has its benefits: the meditative calm, grounded-ness and balance. The devoted pursue transformative spiritual journeys, through poses, chants and breath work. Some followers of tantra yoga take things even further, using sensuality to channel their energy and reach beyond themselves, seeking out of body liberation and enlightenment.
But it’s that very pursuit that has also left hundreds vulnerable to alleged rape and trafficking.
Those crimes are recounted and explored in the new Apple TV series Twisted Yoga. Former followers of the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute (MISA) appear in the compelling (and yes, enlightening) three-part documentary series, describing their slow indoctrination into what appears to be a cult.
The followers, among them a woman named Miranda who shared her story with the Guardian last year, describe going from attending one of several yoga schools in cities like London or Paris to being whisked to secret locations, their sim cards and IDs forfeited. They were allegedly manipulated into sex cam work and orgies, groomed by an international network of yoga camps organised by Gregorian Bivolaru, a self-professed guru who was already wanted by Interpol for sexual exploitation charges in Romania dating back to 2016. Bivolaru was detained in France in 2023, and charged with organized kidnapping, organized abuse of weakness by members of a sect, human trafficking and rape. He’s currently awaiting trial.
Read more https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/mar/10/twisted-yoga-apple-series
Content retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/mar/10/twisted-yoga-apple-series.
