Twisted Yoga (2026) s01e01 Episode Script

1
[sirens blare]
[siren continues]
[woman] So, this is the first time
that I've come back.
It's almost five years to the day, so…
It's a bit of an icky feeling actually.
It's, yeah, kind of…
Yeah, just the thought of the fact
that he's near,
he's… he's somewhere.
[bell tolls]
So I'm here because I have a hearing
with the judge.
The school are going to say
that no crime occurred
because you have consenting adults.
[female attorney] We refute
all of these absurd allegations
which are made with no evidence.
The accusations currently being circulated
include rape, grooming,
kidnapping, human trafficking,
and the accusation of mind control.
[rhythmic drumming and chanting]
[woman 2] I devoted myself whole-heartedly
to the teachings.
They worked. They really worked.
[woman 3] "You might feel scared.
You might feel repulsed.
You might feel overwhelmed
or like you wanna leave.
That's okay, that's just your ego."
[woman 4] This
is going to change your life.
This is a tantric master.
You are going to absorb his qualities.
[woman 5] He came
in the middle of the night.
He touched, with his finger,
the sole of my feet, while I was sleeping
and I woke up like that.
"It's your turn."
I kind of trusted that these people
wouldn't let anything bad happen to me.
I trusted him.
He has been surveilled since 1971.
Young women
were still being taken to Bivolaru.
[crowd shouting]
[man] The guy is a wanted fugitive
on INTERPOL's red list.
[woman 6] Europe, Japan,
all of Scandinavia.
Oh, my God. It's everywhere.
This person is working at the level
of really black, dark magic.
He's very dark and he's very powerful.
Something snapped.
I need to go.
I need to get out of here right now.
[microphone crackles]
[child] Okay,
here we're in our holiday house
with all the old stuff from the…
It's a very nice house.
Bit small, but very nice.
And we're going to…
the bedroom.
There's one bunk.
And up top, we have another bunk.
And there's Ashleigh up there.
[giggles]
[Ash] I was pretty lucky.
I grew up in a stable home.
I had loving parents.
We grew up in a rural town.
A good three-hour drive from Melbourne.
[birds warbling]
[children singing]
[Ash] Went to school in town.
It was pretty uneventful.
[giggling]
[Ash] We grew up in a Catholic family.
Even though I didn't like going to church,
I still had a strong faith.
Every night, I would say my prayers
before I'd go to sleep.
And I would have conversations
with my parents about ghosts
or supernatural phenomena that…
You know, we were all interested
in those sorts of things
and we were very open.
[all cackle]
I started to get interested in…
astrology.
It was just an interest, you know?
I didn't follow it intensely,
but I was interested in astrology.
I was interested in numerology.
I was interested in tarot.
I was interested
in palm readings, psychics.
As I got older
and started to explore my identity
and try and figure out who I am
and what I believe in,
I think that created fertile ground for me
to be really open to, "Well, what next?"
[boing]
I had a boyfriend at the time
and we clashed
because he didn't have
any spiritual beliefs whatsoever.
I wanted to meet the right person,
have a family,
and live a fuller, more meaningful life.
[laughs wildly]
Hey, fam! Just in Piccadilly Circus.
Miss you, guys.
[Ash] I always wanted to move to the UK.
And so then, in 2018…
Big Ben in the background.
…I arrived in London.
[Big Ben chimes]
It's a bit "roll-your-eyes", like,
yeah, I was another Aussie in London.
And then I was newly single.
And I got a job working in the NHS.
I was excited at the prospect
of dating again or meeting someone.
Take you on a little house tour.
This is the bedroom.
And this is the lounge room.
And this is the laundry.
And this is the kitchen.
[Ash] One morning,
I was sitting with a client at work
and I looked at my phone and an old friend
had popped up on the phone.
Him and Ziggy,
these crazy friends who…
left the Army
and became these hippies.
And they would sit on my brother's floor
and make friendship bracelets and…
they would go to festivals
and they were just these kind of, like,
bit of an enigma.
I'd heard this story about how
they'd, like, run off overseas to Europe
and were devoting their lives to yoga
and being in service of humanity.
There was a whole heap of messages
from him like, "Hey."
I can't remember all the messages now,
but one of them said,
"What's the meaning of life?"
And so immediately
that piqued my interest.
[gasps] "Someone
wants to have a philosophical
or a spiritual conversation."
And they were saying,
"We've found this yoga school now.
You know, these days,
yoga's become commercialized.
It's just hot pants and lycra."
"And what we've found is the real thing."
And he sent me, like,
a link to Tara Yoga Centre,
which is the UK branch
of the Atman Yoga Federation.
It had an authentic feel to it.
Quite polished-looking footage.
To me, it looked legit.
Everyone's there
to better themselves in some way.
It was exactly what I was looking for.
So I signed up to the classes.
And they warn you.
They say, "This course will change you."
"You will change on this path.
That will happen.
That's going to happen."
And I wanted what they had.
[pulsing drum beat]
The way that they teach it
is for you to visualize
the activation of a chakra,
and the energizing
of certain parts of your body.
I was so committed.
Like, I would not miss a class.
They talk about the telluric energies
coming up from the earth.
You imagine balancing
happening in your body,
you imagine things becoming unstuck,
you imagine opening and expansion.
It's more than just
stretching your muscles. [chuckles]
There's something spiritual going on
in that process.
You go to a class
and it's a two-hour class
and the first hour is a lecture.
First hour is pure theory
and the second hour is practice.
And I loved that.
Because I was like, "Give me the theory,
give me the knowledge."
And there would be associated handouts
with every lesson.
And there's 20-plus years of courses
and I was only in year one.
That was part of the appeal of the classes
is that they just went into so much depth.
You've got a lot of information
about diet and exercise,
and looking after yourself,
and living well.
They got the different types of yoga.
Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga, Raja yoga,
Laya yoga, Tantra yoga.
Tantra yoga they've described as,
"The yoga of extreme expansion
of the field of consciousness
that includes a complex gamut of methods
and techniques including, among others,
sexual activity for the purpose
of accelerating spiritual evolution
by transmuting and sublimating
the creative sexual potential
for both men and women."
And so then I'm jumping on Google.
I'm like, "What is tantra?"
[laughing] And then…
And then…
I sort of said, "Oh, look,
I don't really know much about it."
But I think what most people think of
when they hear the word tantra
is it's something to do with sex.
It's something to do with… couples
and… this kind of
slowed-down version of sex.
It's kind of what we think of, isn't it?
I was like,
"That sounds really mysterious."
I messaged Ziggy.
He told me that the teachings
and the meditation
and the yoga practice really helped him.
[birds chirping]
[Ziggy] From a young age,
I'm not saying it was like this,
but it certainly felt this way,
that it was me against the world.
[camera clicks]
Coming from a broken childhood
the concept of love and receiving it
was quite unfamiliar to me.
The foster system is there
and it functions to a capacity.
It's not perfect,
but I'm still grateful that it existed.
When I joined the Army,
I was, um, trying to find
a sense of belonging
in a place or a community,
but it just never sat well.
I didn't particularly agree
with a lot of what we were doing,
what we were exposed to.
So it just led us to go and try
and seek those answers elsewhere.
In 2016, I just packed up
and left and came to Europe.
And this yoga school…
[digital pings]
…they were all around the world.
Everywhere.
I've joined that school in Denmark.
In the beginning, I was not a great yogi.
Put me on a mat and it was just,
"Wow… [laughing] that's not pretty."
But you really did feel
like you were part of something
that was just so much grander.
And it just
had this alluring element to it.
Possibly because of the way
things unfolded
in my actual biological family,
motherless and fatherless,
relationships, they were always
something that I struggled with.
I'm not one to say my past relationships
were meaningless,
but it was clunky,
it was full of mistakes.
It sort of put me in a space where,
"Right, I'm this wounded,
closed-off individual
that's attempted to find love
and been chewed up
and spat out as a result."
And that's what led to wanting to go
into this yogi tantric world.
And what better place to learn and grow?
I was aware that
it was probably gonna lead
into this tantric lovemaking ritual,
but I had a lot to learn first.
[Andrea] This was a global school and…
I was very much connected
to the one in Sweden.
For me, it had a huge impact.
It changed me at a very fundamental level.
The teachings spoke for themselves.
I think it transformed my life.
It transformed the way I saw myself,
the way I saw the world,
and part of the tantric teachings
is to really wake up.
Tantra's maybe
four, five thousand years old even.
Long before Christianity.
Yoga and tantra are sisters.
For example, a normal class
would always start
with at least an hour of yoga.
And then if we marry
the teachings of the chakras
with how energy works,
certain positions,
certain, uh, sexual positions
are connected to certain chakras,
certain energies.
One of the goals of tantra
is to awaken this dormant energy.
They talk about the inner marriage
between Shiva and Shakti within tantra.
Shiva is the masculine principle
and Shakti is the feminine principle.
In the meeting with a lover,
there would be a big charge of energy.
We use that energy
as a vehicle towards spiritual growth.
I went in whole-hearted
and I dedicated all my time,
all my energy, everything,
to the school, to the path.
Um…
It was my life.
Common saying they have
is that the tantric path is like…
stepping off a country road
onto an express freeway.
The lessons come fast, they come strong,
and, you know, you… "Be prepared."
[Ash] Ziggy was really involved
in the school by this point.
Someone said, "People think that
tantra is about sex, but it's not.
It's about love. Tantra's about love."
And it's intriguing, right?
Like, it is intriguing, especially
when you're hearing
about it being
about living from the heart.
And about being…
And it being all about love.
You know, that's…
Who doesn't wanna learn about love?
[pulsing drum beats]
I signed up for first-year tantra
and second-year yoga.
[Andrea] The school, all the knowledge
is not available to everybody.
You have the normal classes
and then some people are invited
to take extracurricular classes.
Where you're invited to attend
maybe a weekend workshop.
The teachers would choose the students
that were showing
the most aspiration or the most potential.
Only people deemed…
I don't wanna say "worthy",
but I'm going to say it.
So only people deemed worthy
are allowed in.
[rhythmic whispering]
[Andrea] So a little bit
like a secret society.
[producer] It must have also
been quite compelling.
Very much so. Yeah, yeah.
Very, um… seductive.
Somehow, being closer,
being allowed to be closer
and have closer access to the source
was… was really compelling.
[Ash] I don't recall
when I first heard the word "guru".
[Ash] But then the school refers to him
as the spiritual guide.
[indistinct chatter]
[producer] And they gave you his name?
Yeah, Gregorian Bivolaru.
And that he was Romanian.
[Ash] He was teaching yoga
during the Communist regime.
[Ash] He was teaching in secret
because yoga wasn't allowed
and these sorts of things
were considered a threat to the state.
And they said he, you know,
went out on a limb to teach yoga.
So he's a hero, you know,
look what he did for the people.
[producer] And was there a concept
of where he was?
I had no idea where he was.
I knew that he was in hiding.
[Andrea] We'd spoken openly about this
in class that he'd been to prison before.
And the greats like Mahatma Gandhi was,
you know, persecuted.
And there were many people
who fought for truth and for the light,
who've been persecuted over time.
[Ash] They kind of likened him
to this metaphor of climbing a mountain.
You need the guide there
who knows the landscape,
who knows what they're doing,
to guide you there.
[Ash] A few weeks earlier
I was told there's a festival in Romania
for the entire month of August.
And they said you could write
to the spiritual guide
and ask to go into The Villa.
It'd be a perfect opportunity for you
to learn new techniques
that were specific for women.
And it'd be great for your transformation.
So I wrote to the guru.
"Dear Spiritual Guide Grieg,
my name is Ashleigh
and I'm currently studying the first year
of the intensive yoga course.
I've decided to visit Romania
for the summer camp in Costinesti.
I'm writing to kindly ask
if I may be accepted at The Villa.
The amazing opportunity
would help me to awaken, explore
and understand my femininity."
I did that.
And there's…
the photos that you have to send
of you in a bikini.
And you have to be standing there
holding this…
piece of paper that has your name,
your star sign…
where you're from,
which school you attend.
And that gets sent away
to the spiritual guide
in order to attend the camp.
Now, I did think it was odd
'cause it's like,
"Why can't you read my aura
through my clothes?" [chuckles]
I sent the photos
and then the guru wrote back to me
and it was like, "Yes! We welcome you
to The Villa, come immediately."
[announcer] …platform 6.
[Ash] Costinesti.
It's on the coast of Romania.
The town in August
gets swamped with yogis,
but also with Romanians on holidays.
[pumping electronic music playing]
You've got this kinda of juxtaposition
of all these unaware, unconscious people
drinking, dancing,
and then you have all these awakened yogis
trying to open their hearts
and raise their consciousness
and benefit humanity.
[indistinct voice over speaker]
[Ash] And I was gonna spend a month there
and I was gonna do yoga.
I was excited.
I hadn't been told much.
I knew the school originated
in Romania, the guru was Romanian,
and that most of the students
were Romanian.
And so that was where they hosted
the main summer camp
that everyone came to
from all over the world.
In Denmark,
we had quite a strong school there.
A really big school,
it was quite established.
I was a massive high-achiever.
I was a total nerd.
I got bullied at school.
Um, I would hide in the library a lot
and I would obsessively read.
I had been living in Sydney.
Uh, each time
I would meet a new partner, I would say,
"Don't even bother trying
to give me pleasure.
It's not gonna happen. My body's broken.
But I'm just happy to be here with you
and I want you to feel good."
So I was a real people-pleaser
in that way.
But then at 26, I met a partner
who introduced me to this whole other way
of relating to sexuality and pleasure.
And I started to feel sensations
I didn't know were possible.
He told me that it was connected
to this, um, yoga and meditation tradition
that he'd been practicing.
He was really wanting to explore more
and go deeper with this.
That's when he decided
he wanted to go to Denmark
to do the teacher training
and he invited me to go with him
and said I would be able to live there
and do voluntary work for the school.
I was there in Denmark
for nearly three years
when they said, "You've been invited
on a special women's retreat
which is happening within the camp.
It's part of this, um,
thing called The Villa.
You'll be part of a community of women.
We'll see you there."
[Ash] The Villa.
I didn't… Yeah, I didn't know
what to expect.
To me, it looked tacky.
Like it just wasn't my vibe.
[dog barks]
It's got tall fences.
You're not allowed in
unless you have your pass.
They took my passport.
They get a Bible out,
and you have to say,
"I swear on my health
and my spiritual evolution
that I will not reveal any of the secrets
or anything that goes on here."
There was pages and pages of rules.
They said, "You need to go
to the other room
and read these rules three times.
It might take you about an hour or so."
And then, like,
"Okay, now we do your photos."
And…
they said, "You need to strip off. Naked."
Like, take all your clothes off.
So they can check your aura
to make sure that your energies are…
balanced enough to participate.
And so I took my clothes off
and they take photos front-on
and side profile.
[producer] And did you have any
kind of doubts in the back of your mind
at that point, that it was strange?
I certainly thought it was strange,
but I don't really know…
if I questioned it that much.
I think I was like, "Yeah, this is just…
This is just how it is."
And also, I guess it was kind of
empowering to think,
"Yeah, I'm gonna take my clothes off.
I don't have a problem with my body.
Sure."
And then I had to sit down naked
in front of the camera with a microphone
and answer these questions.
And they also said, "Oh, if we…
if we ask you about, like, 'him',
we're talking about the master.
We will refer to him as 'him'
on the camera.
We won't use his name. It's just 'him.'"
They said, "And if you had the opportunity
to meet him, how would you feel?
What would you say?"
Or something to that effect.
And I'm sitting there cross-legged,
completely naked, with a camera on me,
holding a microphone, and I'm asked that.
And I said, "Yeah, I…
I would be extremely nervous
at the thought of that.
Very intimidated at the thought of that,
but of course I would say yes."
Women would walk around, like,
naked all the time and I loved that.
Like, you felt really open and safe.
You could go to each other for advice
and hold each other and hug each other
and cook each other food
and it was a community.
They'd often been in the school
for a few years or at least two years
before they went into The Villa.
People were surprised,
"Oh, how long
have you been in the school?"
"A few months."
"Oh, and you're in The Villa?"
Like, it was a bit…
[Miranda] I met women
from America, Germany,
Portugal, Brazil, Greece, Thailand,
they come from all over the world.
I was a first-year student
and I went weekly to the classes
and, you know, I already
saw a difference in myself
and my life, compared with a year,
certainly two years, previously.
My relationships were improving,
my sense of self
had just completely changed
and that felt really exciting.
I decided that I should quit my job
and dedicate myself to this full time.
And so you have all of these women there
that seem to be running the show.
They're sort of, I think,
sort of almost mother figures.
They're running around.
They're organizing things.
And almost all of the women in The Villa
would be like,
first question, "What's your star sign?"
Second or third question,
"Are you doing Miss Shakti?"
[Ash] Miss Universe-type style pageants.
And they created these videos of them
for the guru.
And I have to say, I was pretty surprised.
Women dancing, quite seductively.
They're all kind of adorned
with jewels and headdresses.
With, like, the whole camp,
you know, watching.
Miss Shakti is another level, really.
It's kind of the basis of the whole camp.
They teach this idea
that when you empty yourself
of your person,
you are channeling and you are asking
that other character, or entity,
or energy, or goddess, to come into you.
And you become them
for that period in time.
Transfiguration, as they call it.
I'm inviting in the spirit of…
the goddess Kali.
It feels real.
And I don't know…
how to explain why, in a rational way.
It's a contest
and there's a winner. [laughs]
And a first, second and third place.
But ultimately, you're not competing
against the other people,
it's about competing, you know,
against yourself
or becoming a better version of you.
[Miranda] For a woman who's grown up
having shame
and judgement around your body,
thinking that I was fat.
In the school, there's this idea
that your body is sacred
and it's not some kind of object.
[Ash] Sitting and watching this,
you see this really quiet,
reserved, shy person
and then through Miss Shakti,
all of a sudden,
they're in a micro-bikini on stage
like a sex bomb.
I was like, "A micro-bikini?" [laughs]
[Ash] And so many women,
I can't tell you how many there were.
And I knew that some of the higher,
like, the later stages,
there's a few secret stages.
[Miranda] I got kicked out
after the first round.
At the time, I was devastated.
And I thought, "Okay,
was it because I'm too much in my ego?
Was it because, you know, I had
the wrong energy during the performance?
I… You know, why?
What was it about me
meant that I was kicked out at this stage?
What's my spiritual guide
trying to show me here?"
Like, some things I felt were a bit weird.
There was a…
I remember there was an exercise once
that was on conscious touch
and I think you just
kind of closed your eyes
and then everybody had their hands on you.
But then there was this other one
they did right at the end of the month.
It was called an integration.
And almost all of the women in The Villa
were planning to participate.
You had to put your name down if you were
going to participate in the integration.
And if you weren't going to participate,
you had to leave the building
for the duration of the few hours
that it was going on.
And then they started talking
about, um, the technique
which is using the urine.
Which they called the Golden Elixir.
Which is where you're exchanging…
the Golden Elixir.
[laughing] You're exchanging the urine.
After at least 45 minutes
of lovemaking or "charging",
so that it's then "charged."
And that's how you supposedly integrate
the qualities of the partner.
It's like the ultimate kind of connection
and closeness
because you are then drinking
and embodying
these qualities of your partner.
I…
I don't… I didn't want to.
I wasn't… I didn't want to.
So, I…
I sat in the room for it.
And we went into the room,
they had all, like, the…
It was all kind of ritualized.
And then it was just an orgy.
It was just a massive orgy
of all these women.
No men.
And I just sat there, watching,
in a kind of a meditative posture.
And just kind of… just observed.
And then they start passing a bowl around
and they're all collectively peeing
into the bowl.
And then they're bottling it afterwards
into these little vials so that they can
put a couple of drops in their water
so that they can keep embodying
the qualities.
I seemed like I was the only one
that didn't want to. Like it was…
But I rationalized it as,
"Well, I'm not evolved enough.
Maybe one day, I'll be more evolved.
I'm just not there."
[Miranda] When I first did it myself,
it grossed me out.
And I had a moment of being like,
"What… What am I doing?"
You know, it felt weird,
but there was also this sense of…
like, love and acceptance
at a very deep level.
It was certainly intriguing.
But I think I was also just nursing
or holding onto all the shame
that I couldn't bring myself
to be involved.
And…
[producer] So you would've liked
to have been able to?
I would've liked to have wanted to.
I wanted to want to.
Arriving back in the UK,
I was just confused and disorientated.
"I need to get past my blockages.
All these fears and anxieties coming up
just represent the ego.
And, of course the ego's gonna
try and stop you and block you
at every twist and turn
along your spiritual path.
And your job
is to keep destroying the ego.
Keep quelling the ego.
Keep surrendering
and moving past the ego."
Ziggy's influence was pretty significant.
I talked to him at length.
[Ziggy] Everything up until that point
for herself
had seemed just a little bit off-color
for her to want to engage with it
any further.
She certainly struggled
with a lot of the practices.
Her hearing how I've integrated
a lot of the teachings
certainly made her feel more comfortable,
or at least reassured that you can
live a somewhat normal life
surrounding the school.
In Denmark, I was getting brought closer
into the core of the community.
And I had the opportunity to be initiated
into the art of tantric lovemaking.
Paula had been at the school
maybe three years before I'd gotten there.
I knew there'd be a series of postures
within lovemaking.
She guided me through that
in the most loving and caring way.
And it really did feel like a…
a de-arming of the chest and of the heart.
I can feel and relate to myself again.
You know, this has been absent
for so long.
Paula had been
in several relationships by this stage.
She did receive
those initiation techniques so…
I was just having it handed on to me.
Mmm.
[Andrea] The tantric tradition
has always been very much
that it's by initiation only.
Because it's not enough
to just tell somebody who's struggling,
"Yeah, just go and do some more practice."
The… We need to do deeper work than that
and we need to look at ourselves
much deeper than that.
Some things, I can learn from lecturers.
Some things I can learn from yoga,
meditation, whatever.
But there are some experiences
that are only possible
through the direct contact
with the teacher.
There are certain things
that he has to take me through himself.
This was not possible
through anybody else.
That it was really an initiation from,
like, the master to the student.
- [children playing]
- [birds chirping]
[Ash] The receptionist at Tara Yoga,
she messaged me saying,
"Hey, sweetie,
are you coming into the center today?
I wanna talk to you about something."
And she was looking for a private room
and she couldn't find one
because a lot of the studios
were being used.
So she ended up taking me
into, like, this cupboard.
It was like a storage…
It was like a storage room.
And she said, "Oh, do you remember
when we, um, were in The Villa
and we had to put down dates
that we might be available
to visit the guru?"
And she said,
"Well, he's… He's invited you.
You've been invited to go and meet him.
It's integrated for you on these dates.
But it's all secret.
You know, you can't tell anyone else.
You need to book your transport
and we'll pay you back for it.
And the location where you need to go,
where you need to book to, is Paris."
[man in French] I am head
of the Central Office
for Combating Violence against People,
fighting against the most serious attacks.
We operate at a national level
and handle investigations across France
and we also collaborate
with foreign forces.
[both speaking French]
[Dannerolle] Caimades is a special unit
for investigating cult crimes.
It's important to specify that Caimades
does not police beliefs or thoughts.
That's not our role. People are free
to believe what they want.
However, if an offense
is taking place in a cult,
then our role is to intervene.
This case was really massive for us
in terms of scale of investigation.
It is an international movement.
The charges against the members
of this movement
were as follows:
human trafficking,
rape,
exploitation of vulnerable individuals
in states of psychological influence.
[Ash] What's that saying? "When the…
When the student is ready,
the teacher appears."
So, clearly I was ready.
The student was ready, I was ripe.
I was ready and the teacher appeared.