Twisted Yoga (2026) s01e02 Episode Script

1
[man speaking Romanian]
[Andrea] I promised not to speak
of going there or meeting him.
The journeys, the houses…
that was part of the vow.
It was so beautiful
to be part of the sisterhood.
I promised not to…
not to share any of it.
[in French] Every guru says,
"But our members are free…
There are no chains round their ankles,
nor round their arms."
[Paula] It's just trusting the guru, like…
There's nothing naive on trusting a guru
to guide you. Right?
[Ash] I just wanted to practice yoga.
I didn't know that sex was involved
until I had been locked
in a house for five days.
[man in French] This lack of freedom comes
from the cage in their mind,
a cage which the guru
has put in their heads.
[man 2 in English, with French accent]
French law is specific.
If you are abusing people
who are under your influence,
that's a big problem.
[Ash] I cannot sit on my hands
and do nothing.
[indistinct PA announcement]
[Ash] I went on the train to Paris.
The receptionist
at Tara Yoga Centre in London,
she sent me the number
for a woman I'd never met.
I think she was Romanian,
and I had to communicate with her
via Telegram.
So via a secure messaging app.
But she said I had to…
There was an understanding
I had to delete those messages
as soon as she'd sent them.
She was telling me
that it was absolutely secret,
and I couldn't tell anyone
where I was going.
And I had to just tell my parents
that I was going on a silent retreat
in Denmark.
It was easier to not question.
Just go with it and just trust…
trust that I was where I was meant to be.
That was how I got around the fact
that I was gonna be uncontactable.
[Bonnie] My invitation came
after the end of the second year.
It said, "You've been invited
to meet Grieg.
It's a spiritual retreat,
it's gonna be really beneficial for you."
I flew there from Copenhagen to Paris.
[Ash] At the train station
a girl came to me
and she said, "Are you Claire?"
Claire's my middle name.
I don't know why
they thought my name was Claire.
She's like, "Are you Claire?"
I said, "Well, no, I'm Ashleigh."
And she…
took me to a car.
I had to give her my phone.
She took the SIM card out of the phone,
and wrapped that in foil.
Wrapped the phone in foil.
She said, "Oh, we're like the FBI,
you know, or the CIA."
And they said,
"For your protection, um, we need to…
it's important you don't know
where we're going.
And so in order to do that,
I need you to wear this hat
and sunglasses that are blacked out."
[Ash] They said that INTERPOL
have a warrant out for his arrest.
The spiritual guide, he was a fugitive
and he was in hiding.
And they said he was a victim
of human rights violations.
The corrupt Romanian police
had been responsible for this.
I was nervous, but there's
this overall trust of the organization,
like, "Okay,
there's a secret thing happening.
They're trying to protect us.
We need to not know where he is
because he's in hiding.
Because all of these things
have happened to him." Right?
[Ziggy] He wasn't really…
showcased all that much
to the men in the school.
So I was curious.
I also asked whether my tantric partners
had seen him as well or visited.
When they quickly dismissed it
and made it very clear to me
that, no, they've not seen him.
I had no reason to not believe them.
I just thought, "Oh, okay."
But that was the, sort of, first time
I actually did question,
"Are there people going to see him
that we're not really aware of?"
There are all these
hidden camps and retreats
that people just disappear
for weeks on end.
[producer] And you hadn't told Ziggy?
No.
- [producer] Why?
- 'Cause I couldn't.
Like, I had made a vow.
I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone.
So I couldn't say to Ziggy.
I was, like, under oath.
There was some interesting pieces
through the media back in Romania.
All of these wacky stories.
These constant scandals.
Our teacher told us,
"He was wrongly prosecuted back then.
The same thing's happening now."
And that's pretty much all we were told.
[Ash] I got the sense that we were driving
pretty far away from the city
into the suburbs.
I was just telling myself, "Surrender."
"Just surrender."
"Surrender."
[Bonnie] Eventually,
we pulled up at this house,
and with the hat and glasses still on,
I was taken inside.
[rapid breathing]
[camera clicks]
[Ash] The house confirmed for me
that we were definitely
in a suburban area.
It was a three-story house.
It was quite big, it had lots of bedrooms.
And the fence had this,
kind of, like, greenish, sort of…
almost like a tarp, or a netting.
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[in French] Gregorian Bivolaru has been
known to French authorities since 2016.
[elevator dings]
But before then, we knew
that it wasn't a normal yoga movement.
MISA had already been reported
to the local police,
because their activities
raised the neighbors' suspicions.
Our investigations identified
half a dozen locations,
involving many,
many participants and many victims,
potentially over a very long
period of time.
And the question we were asking
ourselves at that point was:
Is this a case of organized crime?
Is it kidnapping? Human trafficking?
Or is this a cult crime?
[Ash] We go into the house…
and…
there were these two girls just lying
on the couch watching pornography.
Like, hardcore porn, on the television.
And they just sort of giggled
and switched it off and scattered around.
Scattered off to another room.
[fox shrieks]
Then they settled me into my room.
[dog barking]
[Bonnie] When I arrived,
there were over 20 people.
All women.
And some of them were girls
that were just in the process,
the same as us, just visiting.
And others were, um,
controlling the operation
or in some position of authority.
Those were the ones who received us
and they're all Romanian.
So anyone in any position of authority,
while I was in Paris, is Romanian.
And there's this feeling
that you're inside
this well-oiled machine. [laughs softly]
[indistinct chatter]
The first thing they did
is they went through all of our bags,
and they looked for certain things.
Maybe an extra phone
or some other paperwork.
And they took anything,
any identifying details
and any electronic devices.
And then they introduced the program,
and they said you'll eventually
be taken to meet Grieg.
But before that happens
there's all of these
other things you need to do.
[indistinct chatter]
[Ash] I had to do the vows.
Again, putting my hand on the Bible
and taking those vows on my health
and my spiritual evolution,
that I would never speak of anything
that happened there.
Then I had to write on these forms,
agreeing to punishments.
One of the things I had to sign
was agreeing to the punishment
of shaving my head
for five years, immediately,
if I was caught trying to steal
any of the secret teachings
from the house.
And knowing that in tantra,
sexual initiation was a thing,
I had gathered this impression that…
it was likely that these
sexual initiations were happening,
and that the spiritual guide
was probably engaging in them.
[dog barking]
I knew…
I knew that it would be
a sexual initiation.
And here was this opportunity for…
beyond satisfaction.
A kind of ultimate happiness
and enlightenment.
It was a promise:
"You will experience these things
and everything will change."
I grew up in Oxford.
I had a privileged upbringing.
We were… We were very lucky.
I went to a private school.
We went on great holidays.
[young Miranda laughs]
I was a very sensitive child.
Um, very shy.
I changed quite a lot as a teenager.
You know, we started to go out drinking
and, you know, smoking, and, um…
having fun.
I reached a point in my late twenties
when I was partying a lot,
I was in quite a difficult relationship.
I noticed there was a pattern in terms
of the relationships that I was in
and the type of people I was attracted to.
And my answer would be
to go out and get wasted.
It numbed the feelings temporarily.
When I was 29,
I started going to 12-step groups.
I really cut down on the partying.
And I started to look into
yoga and meditation.
[seagulls calling]
So when I found Tara Yoga Centre,
there was a sense of, like, a click.
An "aha" moment.
I was completely intrigued
by the possibility
that I could have a deeply
spiritual experience in lovemaking.
For the first week in Paris
I was just focused on
getting those tasks done.
Watching the films,
we had to watch a series of porn films.
Write about how we felt about them
and what kind of states we perceived
that the women were having.
It was, like, everything
that had ever happened in the school
had been leading up to this.
[Ash] There was a woman
who'd been there for two or three months.
I said, "When are you leaving?"
And she's like, "Soon, I hope."
But you had to wait
for his permission to leave.
Like, she couldn't…
She didn't know when she was going.
I remember walking out once
and seeing the girl that won Miss Shakti,
back in August.
She was there
and her head had been shaved.
And there was this note about her,
how her ego had gotten so big
and she needed to kind of be
put back in her place, kind of thing.
But she was… sort of, like,
cut off from everyone.
I was like,
"That's what happens to Miss Shakti?
That's what happens to the winner?
Her head gets shaved?"
- [dog barking]
- [indistinct chatter]
[Ash] It was becoming clear
that every single woman who was there
had been initiated.
They did say, "No, sometimes he doesn't."
But I didn't see anyone there
who hadn't been initiated.
[Bonnie] So they kind of feed you
through this thing for quite a few days.
And it was about day five or six,
where they said, "Okay, now
that you've done all these things,
we can tell you that the reason
that you're here,
when you meet with him,
there will be an opportunity to…
receive sexual initiation from him."
And they framed it as if it was an option.
As it happened, he decided
that I should arrive to him
on the day of my 30th birthday.
I was taken by a driver again.
[metal door clangs]
With the hat and the sunglasses.
And this time it was to an apartment,
and I believe that he parked in
a kind of underground parking garage.
[camera clicks]
[Paula] Most of our friends
had been there already.
[camera clicks]
I found it quite incredible
that after so many years
none of the…
none of the neighbors sensed
that these guys were coming in
and out of that house.
[camera clicks]
Every day, all the time.
At least three
or four girls a day, for sure.
Some girls would go every month.
His favorites.
[Bonnie] And he knocked at the door
and we had to wait for a minute
before it was opened.
And then it was Grieg who opened the door.
And he welcomed me
and gave a hug and said, "Happy Birthday."
And, um, then he kind of sent me
down the hall
and went back into his room.
"Oh, whoa, okay." [chuckles]
"It's the real person
that everyone's so obsessed with.
It's this guy, and he's really old."
Looking into his eyes,
it was almost like a…
like an empty space?
That pulls you in
at the same time as being empty.
I couldn't sense any emotions from him.
Nothing.
[chanting reverberates]
[Bonnie] I'm in this weird,
really tiny apartment
where there's just books everywhere.
[Paula] There's bookshelves
on each side of the hallway,
in his room and the other room.
[Bonnie] If you go down the hallway,
there's the toilet and the bathroom.
A tiny little corner where they have
like a bar fridge, a really small fridge.
And then there is the actual bedroom,
which is just an average-sized bedroom.
And that is where the girls are kept
who are taken to him for sex.
At any point,
there's always a few girls there.
Everyone's sweaty. They take your clothes,
so you don't really have…
Like sometimes people are naked
or you're just wearing
something very minimal,
you don't really have your own clothes.
The place is locked from the outside,
so you can't open the door
from the inside.
And you're sleeping there,
you're eating there. [exhales]
You're doing everything in that space.
He had a team of girls
who were cooking for him.
So they will send it to him,
he will eat a little bit,
and then he will give
all the rest to the girls.
They will store it in the fridge.
[flies buzzing]
But the rule was you couldn't
throw anything on the garbage.
So you had to eat
everything which was there
before you could open a new one,
a new batch of food.
And it would be girls just, like,
eating this moldy food, like…
Because they had to,
like, that was the rule,
otherwise you would get
in trouble and stuff.
[Bonnie] Every so often, someone
gets called in to meet with him.
You hear them having sex for hours.
You hear really loud music.
She eventually comes out.
And really soon after that
she's picked up and taken away
to the third house.
And then, often not long after that,
someone else turns up and takes her place.
And there's people there saying,
"I've been here six times.
I love it.
It's the most amazing experience.
It gives me so much."
Um, and they believe that.
[producer] Do you believe them?
Maybe in some way.
I still felt really uncertain, um,
but I felt like I was open to see.
[Andrea] I had a fantastic experience.
We started the ritual.
[soothing chanting playing]
Going deeply into the transfiguration.
Just as we were taught
in the tantra classes.
Of seeing ourselves and seeing each other
as these deeply spiritual beings.
It's the perfect union of the inner
masculine, the inner feminine.
The Yin and the Yang.
Shiva and Shakti.
I almost ceased to exist.
Somehow I traveled outside of my body.
He guided me through
every single little step.
For me it was a spectacular,
really beautiful meeting.
And after that I was complete.
Like, I wanted to believe
that it was going to, you know, be…
like a milestone for me
in my spiritual path.
I wanted it to be, of course.
'Cause it was always difficult for me.
I never felt that I was, you know,
voluptuous, full of vitality.
I never felt that I fell
into the category of, you know,
this kind of awakened Shakti woman.
I am from the south of Argentina.
A city called Bariloche.
Um…
It's in the mountains.
In the limit with Chile.
When I turned 18, I decided to move
to Buenos Aires, on my own.
Back then, I was taking drugs
on the weekends.
And then when I found Atman at that time,
of course, it came with all
of these nice people that cared for me.
They were much more focused
on spiritual things.
It was just, like, such an upgrade.
And I could see how much trauma,
and how much pain I had inside of me
from my childhood,
that I had never really, uh, addressed.
I wanted to be more involved
in the school.
So I moved to Denmark.
I lived in the ashram. I ate there, I did
everything there. I barely went outside.
I really thought
that to have an initiation with him
that it would help me.
I thought it was, like, the next step
I had to take in order to evolve.
[water dripping]
Before you go there,
basically, you will drink water.
Like two liters of water
or, like, a lot of water.
[water dripping]
You also need to bless the water
with a special formula
that you are given by Grieg.
And then you need
to shower before and shave.
You have to shave completely.
They say that if you do enough
yoga and meditation,
so that you're in a really good
spiritual state,
um, to prepare yourself
sexually in some way,
to… to be centered and grounded
and focused and ready, um, to meet him.
[low, pulsing vibrations]
[Paula] He came in the middle
of the night. I was sleeping.
He touched with his finger
the sole of my feet, while I was sleeping,
and I woke up like that.
Then, like, "It's your turn."
[echoing musical notes playing]
[Miranda] Everything
had been leading up to this, as this…
monumental event.
[pulsing continues]
But this… repeated thought
just kept coming into my head:
"You're going up a mountain,
and Shiva's at the top."
"You're going up a mountain,
and Shiva's at the top."
I don't remember much about the sex.
I was very out of my body.
Very disorientated and frozen.
Um…
And even in the memory
I've blocked a lot of it out,
which is convenient.
But, yeah, it was a long process.
Could have been two hours in total.
Yeah, you start doing one…
one of the positions
which I think they come from Kama Sutra.
So besides learning the postures, you also
learn how to move from one to another
in a graceful way, so that
you will still remain, you know…
uh, in penetration somehow.
[pulsing intensifies]
[Miranda] I felt… It just came in,
"I don't want to do this."
And then, almost immediately,
[sighs] another voice came in,
"You're being superficial.
You're being shallow,
you need to transfigure him."
[pulsing fades]
Transfiguration.
The doctrine of the school.
They say, with the tantra course,
"Don't focus on the physical,
don't be superficial.
It's not a spiritual attitude."
[producer] And did you transfigure him?
Yes.
[deep, humming chords playing]
[rhythmic drumming playing]
[yogis exhale in unison]
[Miranda] The idea is that
you could look at a person
and really, genuinely,
the shape of their body
would start to change,
and would look different.
When you're transfiguring your lover
into the Shiva and the great man
that he can be, he will become them.
[Paula] So you have to have
a lot of transfiguration.
Be able to see beyond what's there.
Because otherwise, yeah, it's an old man.
Like, why would you wanna
be with him, you know?
But if you can see it as Shiva,
the spiritual master
that's gonna help you evolve spiritually,
then, okay, that's a different thing.
[Ash] I just knew I really, really didn't
wanna go through with the initiation.
And then they said,
"You need to write to him and tell him."
And I said that I needed
to work through my own demons.
But I really hoped
that he could support me,
if he was my master,
through the yoga practices
and the meditations.
And he wrote back to me full of…
it was like he was yelling on the page.
You could feel the anger and the heat
and the rage through the pen.
It was just capital letters in this,
like, red fountain pen.
And he said, "You lie!"
And then, I was like,
"But how am I lying?
Like, that's my feeling."
"You lie because you have a big ego,
and a great bad will!"
And he said on this note that…
"Only you have this response
because you are manipulated by demons
who don't want you
to receive divine power.
And for all the love
that I manifest towards you,
your reaction is bizarre,
morbid, sickly, perverted,
completely lacking any good will,
or any aspiration to know God.
Do you feel empathy now? Answer me!"
Like, it was like he was yelling at me.
He said…
"The initiation will…
exorcise your demons."
As in… as in, like, exorcism.
And they said,
"You've been summoned to see him tonight."
When they gave me this letter.
Like, "He wants to see you tonight.
You've been summoned to him."
And I went down to the meditation room.
There's a meditation room
in the basement, where it's silent.
And I went and sat in there because
I knew no one could talk to me in there.
And I prayed.
Um, I prayed to my nana.
I said, "Nana, just please,
just give me a sign…
what I should do.
[voice breaking] Just give me a sign."
[shakily] And that was when I first
had the thought, like,
maybe I could leave.
That… Before that, like,
that thought was too crazy.
Like, I wouldn't…
wouldn't have thought to do that.
[dog barking]
I mean, there was a big fence
with a locked gate.
They had all of my belongings,
they had my phone.
They had my wallet.
I had no way of speaking the language,
I didn't know where I was.
[thumping drumbeats playing]
Nothing felt real anymore,
and I actually thought I was going crazy.
I thought maybe
I was in a state of psychosis.
I didn't know what world I lived in.
I couldn't trust myself.
But I also couldn't trust them.
"No, this is wrong. This is wrong."
That… In that moment, something snapped.
"I need to go.
I need to get out of here, right now."
Before I was allowed to leave
they made me write
this multi-page statement,
that you have to copy out
in your own handwriting, word for word.
And then you have to submit it to them
to crosscheck it
to make sure that you've included
everything in it, and that it's correct.
And then they said,
"Oh yeah, we need to get a video of you
reading out this statement."
And I wasn't about to resist or object
to any instructions at this point.
I just wanted to get out.
During my meeting with Grieg,
everything went on normally, naturally,
and with much common sense,
so that I cannot complain of anything
that throughout the meeting with Grieg
may have traumatized me.
- [Ash] It was like a legal document.
- I specify the fact…
I had to read it on camera
and I remember just thinking in my head,
"They're gonna use this
against me one day."
I specify the fact that there was nothing
that happened against my will,
and I have not been raped.
Neither forced, nor aggressed,
or blackmailed, or hypnotized…
…or beaten, or cursed, or humiliated,
or tortured, or offended, or locked up.
Something really legal sounding
to say that nothing happened to me here,
and if I say anything to the contrary,
this proves that I'm lying.
This final declaration of mine
has been signed by me personally,
in the presence of two witnesses
that guarantee
that I was in a normal state of mind
when I finalized and signed it.
Doing that
gave them permission to let me go.
Signed, Ashleigh Freckleton.
[loud traffic noise, horns blaring]
The driver said,
"Where do you wanna be taken to?"
I said, "Just take me to the cheapest
hotel you can find in the city."
"This can't be real,
it has to be a nightmare.
How do I wake up from this?"
[Dannerolle, in French] In France,
we have special measures in place
for fighting against crimes in cults.
In fact, this notion of "emprise mentale"
or psychological control
was developed to apply to cult crimes.
This is something very unique to France.
An abuse of weakness is taking advantage
of someone's vulnerability.
We're not talking about someone
who is old or ill,
but this person has been
placed under psychological control.
Little by little,
through the use of techniques,
psychological control
erodes the victim's free will.
The person loses their free will,
and does things
that they wouldn't normally do.
[Miranda] After the initiation
with the spiritual guide,
I was exhausted, disoriented.
I felt really shaky.
And I think I was even physically shaking.
But then one of the coordinator women,
she approached me,
she said, "I'm part of a very special
women's integration.
It's all women.
But it's in a different location,
we've got a swimming pool,
it's near a really nice city.
And people call it
the Garden of Miracles."
And then she said, "Now that you know
these things that most people don't know,
you have a responsibility.
It's your responsibility
to not lower your consciousness,
and go back to doing things
the way that you did them
when you didn't know."
She asked me if I was interested,
and I said, "Yes."
And so we went together
to the bus stop in Paris.
It was my first chance to sleep for,
like, almost 42 hours probably.
Then when we got to Prague,
we were taken to a suburban house,
on the main line heading out of Prague.
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
They sat me down and they explained to me
what would be happening in the house.
We would do erotic rituals in the morning.
[women laughing]
[Miranda] And then after that
you had to do a four-hour shift,
six days a week, on a cam-girl site.
[women laughing seductively]
SEX CAM
NUDE
[faint moaning, panting]
WATCH… LEXI! WET. READY.
PRIVATE PEAKS 4U
SEX CAM
[Miranda] The way
they spoke about it is that,
because we were doing
the rituals in the morning,
that energy from the rituals
was going to amplify our power
and our magnetism,
in karma yoga and on the site.
And we were going to be able
to transmit that energy
to the people watching us
and to the paying clients.
So that then these men could hopefully
start to connect to an energy
beyond the base sexual energy.
The idea of karma yoga
is that it's selfless service,
and you're offering for a greater purpose.
We were going to be
saving their souls, in a way.
So, you walked down
the stairs to the basement,
and if you went round to the right
there was the "Hot and Wet channel" room.
Tiny room, airless, hot, no windows.
So you logged on.
And then you had your page
and your chat up
where you saw
the image of yourself being streamed.
Sometimes, the guys would ask you,
you know,
"What did you do yesterday evening?"
And we were told,
"Pretend that you have a normal life.
Tell them that you went out
for drinks with your friends.
You went home and cooked pasta."
We were told to be careful.
[faint moaning]
[Miranda] We got told
there were people spying on us,
who would try and trip us up.
They will ask, "Oh, you know,
do you practice yoga?"
And were out to blow our cover.
In those six months,
I was never paid
for any of the work I did.
There was this notion that when I looked
at myself on the camera…
I was seeing past the cheap outfits.
And as I had done many times before,
over the past few years,
looking at my body
and seeing something divine.
[exhales slowly]
So much is at stake
if the answer to the question
which has always been,
"Yes, yes, yes. I believe. I trust."
And then you get to a point
where it's a "maybe" or a "no".
There's… so much of your life,
your internal belief system,
your relationships.
It's… just everything, you stand to lose,
as far as you can perceive,
everything.
Including your… your own…
spiritual future or salvation.
[Ash] I booked the next flight
that I could get, back to Australia.
I just wanted to be at home with Mum
and Dad, I just wanted to catch my breath.
I didn't work for about a month,
I just tried to figure out what happened.
Just tried to unpack it.
I just was so confused.
Maybe a few months after I got home,
I got… really drunk at a party.
Like, really drunk.
And I think I just
word-vomited to a friend.
I ended up just telling him.
When I was telling him
about what had happened,
I just saw the look
on his face of just shock.
And just, he's like…
"This is really bad.
Like, this is really, really bad."
That was when I sort of started,
I think, to talk more about it.
[Ziggy] I get a call from Ashleigh,
basically explaining why she left.
I felt such shame and guilt.
'Cause immediately,
I'm thinking to myself,
"Here's Ashleigh,
barely involved with the school.
If a woman with that level
of commitment to the school
is getting brought in
to meet the spiritual guide,
then, obviously, you know, my partners,
practically all the women of the school
have probably gone
and had this experience, too.
This is so sick. These poor women.
Who on Earth is this guy?"
[train announcement in Romanian]
[Andreea] I was a student in university
when the scandal broke, back in 2004.
I remember seeing all those images on TV,
about Gregorian Bivolaru.
More recently, I became
an investigative reporter.
I started looking more into this group.
These newspapers cover
a very large period of time
starting from the early '90s
until 2004, when the scandal really broke.
I really was surprised
that this was still going on.
Because this is an old story in Romania.
It has been a story for 30 years now.
Everybody in Romania knows
who Gregorian Bivolaru was.
He was basically a household name.