--- title: The True Story Behind 'Twisted Yoga' description: Apple TV’s three-part docuseries follows several people whose search for wellness and community gave way to mounting concerns about the organization they'd joined canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/03/13/twisted-yoga-documentary/ author: JP Mangalindan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-03-13T17:52:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-19T07:44:50.915Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: The True Story Behind 'Twisted Yoga' og:description: Apple TV’s three-part docuseries follows several people whose search for wellness and community gave way to mounting concerns about the organization they'd joined og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/03/13/twisted-yoga-documentary/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltccaf0751d671d6bc/69b4485f4eeab1567a6d2ed7/Twisted_Yoga_Photo_010302.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Twisted_Yoga_Photo_010302.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The True Story Behind 'Twisted Yoga' twitter:description: Apple TV’s three-part docuseries follows several people whose search for wellness and community gave way to mounting concerns about the organization they'd joined twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltccaf0751d671d6bc/69b4485f4eeab1567a6d2ed7/Twisted_Yoga_Photo_010302.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The True Story Behind Apple TV's 'Twisted Yoga' Documentary > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [JP Mangalindan](https://time.com/author/jp-mangalindan/) ## JP Mangalindan Mar 13, 2026 5:52 PM UTC  Twisted Yoga Twisted YogaCourtesy of Apple TV by [JP Mangalindan](https://time.com/author/jp-mangalindan/) ## JP Mangalindan Mar 13, 2026 5:52 PM UTC The yoga schools operated under different names across nearly 30 different countries. In London, it was called Tara Yoga Centre; in Denmark and Sweden, NATHA. All over the world, students signed up for courses in yoga and tantra and lectures on consciousness and sacred sexuality, expecting to travel a path of spiritual evolution practiced within a close-knit community. Each school appeared local and independent on the surface, but they were all linked together by a single figure: Romanian yoga teacher Gregorian Bivolaru. Over decades, Bivolaru built an international network of schools and allegedly abused his influence; he now awaits trial in France on charges including human trafficking, kidnapping, and rape. _Twisted Yoga_, Apple TV’s three-part docuseries debuting March 13, follows several former members whose search for wellness and community gave way to mounting concerns about the cult-like organization they joined. The series examines the psychological mechanisms that kept many followers in the network for years. Their testimony is what drew director Rowan Deacon into the project. Deacon was struck by how clearly the former members described the dynamic Bivolaru is accused of cultivating to violate their boundaries. “They were incredibly articulate, self-reflective, intelligent people who were able to really help me understand a quite complicated psychological process,” Deacon says. “That was a real invitation to try and make something that digs into some quite dark, complex places.” The series was conceived as an exploration of belief, belonging, and how the search for meaning can be twisted and turned against the very people pursuing it.  Courtesy of Apple TV ## **From communist Romania to a global network** Bivolaru’s origin story is, by any measure, an unlikely one for a spiritual guru. Born in Romania in 1952, he came of age under one of Eastern Europe’s most repressive regimes—a state where religion was suppressed and citizens were surveilled by the Securitate, Romania’s feared secret police. Activities like yoga were effectively banned. The Securitate first took note of Bivolaru in 1971, when he was 19 and in his final year of high school. He was later convicted for possessing and distributing pornographic materials. In the summer of 1989, the Securitate organized raids across several Romanian cities to dismantle underground yoga groups. Bivolaru, who led one such group, was detained—not in a prison but in a psychiatric unit. Months later, in December 1989, the communist regime collapsed, and Bivolaru was released. Within a year, he founded the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute, or MISA, a Romania-based yoga movement. The timing favored Bivolaru. “There was a vacuum of leadership, a vacuum of ideas, a vacuum of purpose,” says Deacon, describing post-revolutionary Romania as she came to understand it through her research. “This kind of guru, as Bivolaru styled himself, was an incredibly attractive proposition for people who hadn’t been given the opportunity to believe in something beyond the party for so many years.” The movement grew rapidly; Bivolaru became increasingly well-known. When the production team traveled to Romania, Deacon recalls, taxi drivers recognized Bivolaru’s name immediately. An archivist helping the crew mentioned, casually, that he had once been a member himself. Over the next 15 years, MISA expanded from Romania into Western Europe and beyond, establishing yoga centers in nearly 30 countries. The schools operated with a degree of autonomy—each with its own staff and local identity—but shared a single spiritual guide: Bivolaru. When Swedish authorities granted him asylum in 2006, after he claimed persecution as a dissident of the former Romanian regime, his reach only widened. By the late 2000s, the network had grown vast and difficult to pin down. “You wouldn’t necessarily know if you were reading something about the Atman Federation online that it was linked to the Tara Yoga school in London,” says Deacon, referring to the international umbrella organization that emerged from Bivolaru’s original group, MISA. The structure made it harder for outsiders to connect those dots. ## **The slow work of indoctrination** At the center of the docuseries are the women who chose to speak out about their experiences: among them are Ashleigh Freckleton, an Australian who joined London’s Tara Yoga Centre in 2018 while recovering from a breakup and adjusting to life in a new city; Bonnie, a self-described high achiever from Denmark who enrolled in 2012; and Miranda, an English woman drawn to Tara Yoga Centre in 2017 after exploring yoga in India. Each arrived seeking spiritual growth and mental wellbeing. What they found, gradually, was something else. Deacon describes the psychological erosion they experienced as a kind of “boiling frog syndrome,” where Bivolaru’s ideologies slowly reshaped a person’s sense of self, sexuality, and previously held values. The initial practices—meditation, standard yoga—were genuinely beneficial. That was part of the design. “It wasn’t just disorientating or dodgy from the outset,” Deacon explains. “The practices actually are positive. People felt the benefits.” Those early results built trust. From that trust, students were gradually introduced to tantric philosophy. Rooted in Hindu spiritual traditions, tantra teaches that enlightenment can be pursued through practices that integrate the body, mind, and sometimes sexuality. In Bivolaru’s schools, students were encouraged to shed ego and push past personal boundaries in pursuit of spiritual evolution, with sexuality framed as a central pillar of the teaching. Over time, the school’s teachings began to reshape how participants understood themselves and their place in the world. “It was very difficult for these women to disentangle their own identities from the belief system they had committed to,” Deacon says. For some, the process culminated in a trip to Paris, where they were brought to a suburban home outside the city to meet Bivolaru for what was described as a “spiritual initiation,” a ritual described by former members as lasting several hours and involving different sexual positions. Freckleton recalled being told to communicate only via Telegram, to delete her messages immediately, and to tell her parents she was going on a silent retreat in Denmark. When she resisted the sexual nature of the ritual, she received an angry handwritten note from Bivolaru. She was called a liar, told she was “manipulated by demons.” She eventually negotiated her release, but only after recording a coerced video statement declaring that nothing traumatic had occurred. Other former members detailed the reach of Bivolaru’s network. After her “initiation,” Miranda says a woman who was part of the network in Prague took her to a house there, where she was pressured to work on a webcam site under the guise of karma yoga, or selfless service for a higher spiritual purpose. The women there were told they owed debts for food and accommodations, a common tactic in trafficking cases. Miranda says she was never paid for the work she did. Deacon was deliberate in how she told these stories. “We were incredibly careful to gather facts from the women’s own experiences,” she says. “We couldn’t include anything from hearsay or any ideas that they had heard. All of the testimonies are the women’s lived experience—what happened to them.” The approach was both a legal necessity and an editorial one: Bivolaru denies all charges against him, and the case in France—where he was arrested in November 2023 during a raid involving 175 police officers—has not yet gone to trial. He remains in custody awaiting proceedings.  Courtesy of Apple TV ## **An unfinished story** Because the legal proceedings are ongoing, the filmmakers made a conscious decision not to deliver their own verdict, making a series that functions less as a true-crime procedural than as a psychological examination. That meant rejecting certain conventions of the genre. Deacon chose not to score the series with the kind of ominous, foreboding tones common to true-crime documentaries. She wanted the music and imagery to articulate the contributors’ experience from the inside: the sense of beauty and possibility they initially felt while under the organization’s influence. “We tried very much to use music and visuals that really spoke to the sort of hope and seductive qualities of the school,” she explains. The imagery in the early episodes is deliberately alluring: scenes of warm light, fluid yoga movements, a feeling of calm that mirrors what the women experienced before the cracks appeared. A second visual perspective enters late in the first episode, when French police begin their investigation, introducing a cooler, more procedural gaze that interprets the same activities as potentially criminal. The docuseries also captures something more intimate and difficult to stage: the moment when language itself begins to shift. Throughout the interviews, the former members grapple with the vocabulary they once used, gradually recognizing that what they experienced caused real harm. It is a subtle but striking transition. What was once framed as spiritual practice is reframed—often painfully—as coercion, exploitation, and abuse. _Twisted Yoga’s_ producers reached out to Bivolaru through his legal representatives, but he did not respond to their request for comment. Organizations connected to the network, including NATHA Denmark, NATHA Sweden, and the international umbrella group Atman, said they operate in compliance with national laws. In a statement to producers, MISA denied allegations of trafficking, abuse, manipulation, or coercion. Tara Yoga Centre declined to comment due to ongoing legal proceedings. _Twisted Yoga_ ultimately invites viewers to sit with questions that resist easy answers. Deacon hopes viewers recognize the dynamics at work—the slow slide from guidance to control, from belief to indoctrination—not as something exotic or distant, but as patterns that may be familiar. “It’s not just something that takes place in an esoteric yoga organized movement,” she says. “People might resonate with \[those dynamics\] or recognize them from other parts of their own lives.” The series, in that sense, carries an insistent message—one Deacon distills with a phrase borrowed from Shakespeare: “To thine own self be true.” It is a sentiment that reaches far beyond a single movement or moment. _Twisted Yoga_ does not wrap its story in a bow; it provides neither catharsis nor closure. What it offers instead is a clearer view of an enduring thread: the human need to belong, the vulnerability that need creates, and the thin, shifting line between faith and surrender. Those tensions are not confined to a yoga studio in London or a house in the suburbs of Paris. They surface anywhere belief and authority intersect: where the promise of meaning meets the desire for connection and where the language of devotion can become a means of control. The women in _Twisted Yoga_ know how easily that line can blur. 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