DOZENS of women have come forward about attending yoga schools looking for tranquility, only to be whisked away to secret locations where they were allegedly forced into orgies and sex cam work.
The newly revealed information was unearthed in Apple TV’s latest docuseries Twisted Yoga, which releases Friday.
Many people practice yoga to reach a calm state in hopes of grounding themselves from the stress of daily life.
From posing to breath work, many can achieve that sense of tranquility.
Apple TV‘s new series reveals there are hundreds of people practicing yoga who have been left vulnerable to alleged trafficking and rape.
Twisted Yoga, a three-part documentary series, follows the experience of followers from the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute (MISA), who revealed their slow indoctrination into an apparent cult.
Followers said they attended several yoga schools in London or Paris before being taken away to secret locations and having to forfeit their sim cards and IDs, according to The Guardian.
The yoga-goers were then allegedly manipulated into participating in orgies and sex cam work, being groomed by an international network of yoga camp organized by self-professed guru, Gregorian Bivolaru.
Bivolaru was already on Interpol’s radar for sexual exploitation charges in Romania from 2016.
“The question that we grappled with is how come this hasn’t come to the fore sooner?” Rowan Deacon, the Twisted Yoga director told The Guardian.
“How come people haven’t spoken out sooner? Why is it happening now, when this man has been in Paris doing this for 20 years?”
Bivolaru was detained in France in 2023 and is now awaiting trial after being charged with organized kidnapping, human trafficking, rape and organized abuse of weakness by members of a sect.
Tantric yoga is a form of yoga that aligns with an ancient spiritual practice originating in India. Tantra is often associated with Tantric sex, a spiritual, sensual form of sex.
MindBodyGreen describes it as “more a moving meditation than a physical workout,” focused on internal reflection and connection, with physical strength, flexibility and prior knowledge of postures “taking a backseat to the primary intention of self-knowledge and empowerment.”
Miranda, one of the women in the documentary who hared her story, and many other followers of MISA, were allegedly inevitably lured into sex with Bivolaru as part of a transfiguration ritual reaching for the divine.
Deacon and Suzanne Lavery, the executive producer of Twisted Yoga, wanted the docuseries to be a psychological story exploring power and consent, where neither age nor financial power play a role in what made the victims vulnerable.
The series’ makers wanted to avoid creating true crime sensationalism with its release as Bivolaru awaits trial and has reportedly used the remnants of the communist regime in Romania to paint himself as unfairly prosecuted.
“I wanted this to be an empathetic piece that explained these women’s stories to people from their point of view, not from the police or an investigator,” Deacon said.
“It allowed us to explore the way in which the psychological power, ideologies and dogma can really get under the skin and really start to change the way that these women saw themselves, and saw their own boundaries.”
One of the subjects in the series, Ashleigh Freckleton, joined the Tara Yoga Centre in London in 2018, after seeking out a form of self-improvement following a romantic breakup.
Freckleton got deep into the yoga school and was eventually ushered into a secret house in Paris where she was allegedly groomed for the transfiguration ritual.
She was able to escape before being formally indoctrinated.
In the trailer, Freckleton, who later went on to be Bachelor Australia contestant, said she had her passport taken and was told to swear on a Bible, “I swear on my health and my spiritual evolution that I will not reveal any of the secrets or anything that goes on here.”
Deacon pointed out that unlike some of the other survivors who may have come from broken homes or faced similar trauma, Freckleton described having a happy childhood, solely seeking out yoga as a way to find a new direction after a breakup.
“It was important to make sure that not everybody was pigeonholed into a ‘oh, that’s why they …” she said.
“What we really didn’t ever want was for people to say, ‘Oh well, that would never happen to me. I would never join an organization like that,’” Lavery explained.
Miranda’s story
Miranda, who shares her experience in the documentary, also came forward with her story in an interview with The Guardian in 2025.
She also attended the Tara Yoga Centre in London, telling the outlet that yoga could “move a stressful day into something more manageable and the philosophical perspectives helped me to consider that things happen for a reason, to process difficult life events with more ease than before.”
She was drawn to Tara Yoga’s “inner circle” after she began dating one of the teachers. She went on a retreat with Bivolaru’s MISA organization and said at times it seemed “a bit weird” with the regular playing of soft porn films.
Miranda said at Tara, Tantric yoga was showcased as a route to feeling more positive, connection and love.
Miranda was later informed of Tara’s sister center, a Tantric massage “Temple” which she now believes was part of the indoctrination.
At the temple, “sex work is seen as spiritual; a service for the uplifting of the clients and your own spiritual growth,” she said.
She was told the topless sacred massages she was instructed to give were a part of selfless service without reward, something emphasized in Karma yoga, and a form of healing, which helped her justify staying for three months.
After quitting her part-time teaching job for another retreat in Hungary, she was later told she could meet Bivolaru for “the initiation.”
“I’d been told by my teachers that this would be a spiritual turning point for me, a transformative experience.”
She was forced to hand over her credit cards, phone and passport when she arrived at a holding house in Paris. There, she shared a room with dozens of women from a variety of countries.
She wondered what she would do if she wanted to leave, but was convinced if she backed out, it would ostracize her from the community that had engulfed her world.
After two weeks she was blindfolded and taken to Bivolaru’s grimy Parisian apartment where she and the women did their yoga practices, read books and watched DVDs.
Later, it was Miranda’s turn for “initiation” which allegedly involved a sexual encounter with Bivolaru in seven positions meant to reflect the seven chakras, which tantra teaches are the seven energy points in the body.
“I would say I was also pretty detached from the physical, at this point: ‘I’m here now, I have to get through this.’ There was a fair amount of dissociation going on,” she told The Guardian.
She was then taken to a house in Prague for another period of “spiritual practice” where she was allegedly pressured into webcamming.
The women there, including Miranda, were told they were in debt for the accommodation, food and travel for various retreats and that they needed to work for it.
She was only allowed to leave after six months.
