Transcript BBC podcast - The Bad Guru
Original podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0026jxl
1. The
Retreat
[Host: Cat McShane] (0:00 - 0:52)
You're about to listen to the latest series of World of Secrets, The Bad Guru. Episodes will be released weekly,wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the full series right now, first on BBC Sounds. This series contains explicit sexual content, some strong language and allegations of sexual exploitation.
This episode includes explicit sexual content.
Inside a yoga studio in London, neat rows of women and men are sitting on their mats with perfect postures.The teachers here usually talk a lot about love, but not today. Today, the teacher won't be guiding them through Sun Salutations. Instead, he's gathered the group to denounce a former student, Miranda, a 30-something university tutor from Oxfordshire.
[yoga teacher Bogdan Radasanu] (0:53 - 0:56)
So we will start now with a presentation about Miranda.
[host] (0:57 - 1:07)
A man relates a message from the yoga school's guru. This is a secret recording from the meeting. It's hard in places to make out what he's saying, so I'll explain it.
[yoga teacher Bogdan Radasanu] (1:07 - 1:14)
The former student, Miranda, has cleverly taken advantage of your naivety.
[host] (1:14 - 2:05)
He says the former student has taken advantage of their naivety. The message is that Miranda is a liar who has spread [yoga teacher’s voice secretly recorded] ”obviously false tendentious pieces of information and sensational cunning slander is insidiously whispered in a way here”. Miranda has made some serious allegations against what he calls this esoteric spiritual school. It's a worldwide yoga movement, and this place in London, Tara Yoga Centre, is part of it. This is a potential crisis, not just for this yoga centre in London, but the entire international movement, because the accusations this former student has made about the guru and his movement are jaw-dropping.
[Miranda] (2:05 - 2:08)
My phone and my passport were taken from me and wrapped in foil.
[Miranda speeking on the phone]
...he’s been on Interpol's wanted list...
[Miranda] (2:11 - 2:26)
...dark glasses which had masking tape on the inside, we couldn't see where we were going.
[host]
To hide behind yoga is particularly reprehensible.
[Miranda]
I have nothing. I have a bag with some knickers in it and a toothbrush.
[host]
I knew that the whole movement had started in Romania.
[Michael] (2:26 - 2:27)
It's already a cult.
[host] (2:27 - 2:37)
- Can I ask you, while I've got you on the phone, why you encourage students from the yoga school to work in a cash-in-hand, unlicensed, topless...
[yoga teacher on the phone] (2:37 - 2:39)
- I'm sorry... [undistinguished]
[host] (2:46 - 2:56)
This is World of Secrets, season six, The Bad Guru, a BBC Radio 4 investigation.
I'm Cat McShane. This is episode one, The Retreat. This story starts for me in January 2021, on that first rainy day of the third pandemic lockdown in England and I'm wishing I wasn't stuck inside these four walls. Perhaps it's boredom that makes me agree to do a call with a yoga teacher in Oxford called Laura Hancock.
[Laura Hancock] (3:36 - 3:44)
They can't believe this is happening in the yoga industry because this is supposed to be a place of healing, of care, of support, of all of that stuff.
[host] (3:44 - 3:51)
Laura is a friend of a friend and she's been put in touch with me because she's looking for a journalist to help her expose what she says is a scandal.
[Laura Hancock] (3:51 - 3:57)
It can feel really overwhelming and unbelievable and sometimes I wake up and I think, you know, am I making this up?
[host] (3:58 - 4:07)
It's the start of a series of conversations we have over the coming months about the role of one yoga network with a base in London and also her hometown of Oxford.
[Laura Hancock] (4:08 - 4:12)
In terms of like chatter in Oxford, I mean, it is like everyone knows about it.
[host] (4:13 - 4:17)
She's read an article online about the man she says is their spiritual guide who lives in hiding abroad.
[Laura Hancock] (4:18 - 4:20)
...A very, very horrible person.
[host] (4:20 - 5:42)
As the months go by, Laura and I both investigate the guru. We hear a series of increasingly outrageous sounding allegations about him and the international network he's inspired.
[Laura Hancock on the phone]
... it’s about grooming, coercion... passport being taken, disguised and then being you know in a house and not feeling like they can leave and...
[host]
Laura suspects some of the women who started by attending classes in Oxford might have ended up being trafficked as victims of modern slavery. Could an innocent-looking yoga school in Oxford be linked to this stuff? The place Laura is talking about is the branch of a registered charity called Tara Yoga Centre. It has run classes throughout the British Isles: London, Cambridge, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Plymouth, Burton-on-Trent, Woking and Dublin, as well as Oxford. And most people who've attended their classes won't have a clue about the sort of accusations Laura and I are investigating. It's clear we're going to need to speak to many more alleged victims and we need someone who says they've lived through this and is willing to speak on the record. That isn't easy. And we both have a sense that people who have been deeply involved feel duty-bound to remain loyal. So, when three years later, I sit down with a whistleblower in a studio, it's quite a moment.
[Miranda] (5:42 - 5:49)
A large group of people will be very unhappy about the fact that this is happening.
[host] (5:50 - 6:02)
Meet Miranda from Oxfordshire. She's the woman who was being talked about at that yoga meeting in London at the beginning of this episode. She's decided to sue Tara Yoga Centre and to go public.
[Miranda] (6:03 - 6:28)
I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line, but I want truth and justice and for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future.
[host] (6:29 - 7:15)
Miranda's now in her late 30s and has long, curly, unswept hair. She wears bright, bold prints that give you the impression she's just stopping by to see you before going to her next music festival. I sit opposite her in the recording studio.
- So are you happy to start?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
And she tells me her story over four days.
Miranda is a well-educated, intelligent woman from a privileged background. In fact, all the women I've spoken to while investigating this story have been bright, impressive types who do that oh-so-middle-class thing, trying to find themselves through yoga. Miranda wants to tell her story, but she doesn't want to be forever known for it. So I'm just going to use her first name.
[Miranda]
I had a very happy childhood.
[host] (7:16 - 8:10)
Miranda grew up with her dad, two brothers and her mum, Penny.
[Penny]
Well, we started out in London in a house in Clapham and then when Miranda was eight, we moved to Oxfordshire, about six miles outside of Oxford, a sort of overgrown cottage I always describe it as. We were middle-of-the-road parents, really, in the sense that we wanted to be more liberal than our own parents had been, but we didn't set out to be our children's best friends. There was money for exotic foreign holidays. We had a lot of fun together, a lot of laughs and Miranda seemed to thrive. She has always had a terrific sense of humour and has always been great fun. She had, you know, a mischievous side, but just normal mischief, really.
[host] (8:10 - 8:24)
So this is a privileged family growing up in an idyllic setting, but life wasn't always easy. There are some deeply private matters that I can't go into, but suffice it to say that this family also had more than its fair share of bad luck.
[Miranda] (8:24 - 8:48)
Yeah, you know, challenges arose over the past 15 or so years in our family, so that hasn't always been easy. But I think it's been another motivating factor for all of us to seek therapy and different ways of living with in the most kind of positive and life-enhancing way.
[host] (8:48 - 8:57)
A family dealing with life's challenges while looking for something more profound.
[host]
- Where do you think Miranda's search for more spiritual meaning came from?
[Penny] (8:58 - 9:20)
- Well, I think I would put my hands up and say that there's a certain inheritance aspect here because I've always been a seeker. I've always wanted to find out more about what lies behind human existence.
[host] (9:24 - 9:36)
When Miranda graduates, she moves to London and gets a job as an English teacher. It's stressful, so she decides to take a year off travelling. She ends up in India at an ashram and yoga just seems to work for her somehow.
[Miranda] (9:36 - 9:44)
I overcame things, a lot of things in a shorter period of time than I had done with other types of development.
[host] (9:44 - 9:52)
After India, Miranda comes back to London and she searches online for classes and the first yoga group she comes across seems perfect.
[Miranda] (9:53 - 10:04)
It felt a really safe and welcoming space. I noticed from the beginning that the people on reception were always very, very smiley, friendly, welcoming.
[host] (10:05 - 11:12)
It's the London branch of Tara Yoga Centre, an affiliate of Atman, the international federation of yoga and meditation. There are endless different types of yoga popular across the globe, an industry worth nearly a billion pounds in the UK alone. There are nearly 5,000 British yoga studios where each week half a million of us bend our bodies into downward dogs, breathe deeply, meditate and try and find a way to clearer minds and stronger bodies.
In common with other affiliates of the Atman federation, Tara offers two types of yoga. One, the sort you might be familiar with. It's called Hatha yoga. A lot of poses, stretches, all seemed quite normal. But Tara and Atman affiliates also offer a more niche version of yoga too, Tantric. When I first heard of Tantric, I thought of Sting and his fabled seven-hour marathon sex sessions with his wife, Trudy.
But as Maria Porsfelt, one of the leaders of the Tara Yoga Centre, explains in this talk entitled Open Couple Relationships on Tara's YouTube channel, it's about spirituality too.
[Maria Porsfelt] (11:13 - 11:27)
One of the areas of our life that we aim to integrate in a tantric practise, which is a practise that encompasses and integrates all areas of our lives in our spiritual practise, would be that of love and relationships.
[host] (11:29 - 11:53)
Maria became one of the directors of Tara Yoga in 2016, a year before Miranda discovered it. Maria is a reassuring looking presence on the Tara Yoga website. She smiles sweetly. She talks softly in her Danish accent as she lectures about such topics as the importance of pleasure in happiness, the meaning of life and that talk on what she calls open couple relationships.
[Maria Porsfelt] (11:53 - 11:57)
In reality, the only relationship that really works is an open one.
[Miranda] (11:58 - 12:23)
I was interested in there being a different way to interact sexually and for relationships and sexuality to be used for spiritual experiences and receiving teachings which I could then take into my personal life and use with a partner.
[host] (12:23 - 12:45)
For weeks, Miranda attends a one-hour tantric class. Miranda starts going to another class at Tara too called the Shakti group. It's just for women. Men have their own class. Miranda feels the classes are helping her to be more confident and sexy in the name of embracing her divine feminine power. Tara Yoga also has open days.
Miranda's mum Penny goes to one, but she isn't impressed.
[Penny] (12:46 - 13:16)
- Let me come straight out with it. It was a bit icky. I guess what struck me was there was a lot of, shall I say, hugging and embracing.
[host]
- And did you share any of that with Miranda?
[Penny]
- Oh no, I wouldn't have dreamt of it because that would have been ungracious and churlish. You know, she'd invited us to something that she was involved in. And you know, to all intents and purposes, it was a lovely heartfelt event.
[host]
And Miranda is getting a lot out of this group.
[Miranda] (13:16 - 13:19)
I felt really good after the yoga classes. I felt amazing.
[host] (13:26 - 13:46)
In the spring of 2018, Miranda wheels her suitcase up the long gravel drive of a beautiful country house in Somerset, southwest England. She's looking forward to a break from her new life in London, teaching university students how to write academic English. She's here for a retreat weekend organised by the Tara Yoga Centre.
[Miranda] (13:47 - 14:31)
There was a romance to the house and the furnishings. There was an indoor pool with a sauna and a steam room, four poster beds.
[host]
The weekend course she's here for is called the Polarity Retreat.
[Miranda]
I thought it would be a good way to develop my friendships with the women in the group and I was excited to learn more, really.
[host]
Polarity is one of Tara Yoga's tantric theories.
[Miranda]
There's this very binary concept that they adhere to that men and women have very different needs, qualities, energies, and that by separating them as much as possible, you increase the magnetism between them.
[host] (14:31 - 14:46)
Miranda unpacks her bag, changes into her yoga clothes, and goes downstairs and joins the women's group. And in one of these beautiful rooms at the country house with floor-to-ceiling sash windows, women do yoga exercises that are similar to the ones she's been doing in London.
[Miranda] (14:47 - 15:12)
You would keep your eyes closed and they would say ”you now feel”, and this would be followed by a series of statements, ”you now feel a sense of love without an object, a sense of connection to the universe, a sense of selfless devotion”. They claim to know a lot about these things. This is what they say I should be feeling ”OK, I can start to feel that!”
[host] (15:13 - 15:19)
After yoga, they learn about makeup, clothes, how to look sexy, even practising dance routines.
[Miranda] (15:19 - 15:44)
We were encouraged to dance very sexually to a song, to kind of interact with each other in a sexual way while dancing...
[host]
...While in a separate part of the building, the men are also at work.
[Miranda]
We were told, don't ask the men what they were doing. They're not going to ask you. Part of polarity is that you keep these activities completely separate.
[host] (15:44 - 16:00)
The men were learning how to be what Tara calls a tantric man. But at various points over the retreat, the men and the women were encouraged to snap out of their seclusion, to rejoin the opposite sex, perform a ritual together, and let the magnetism take over.
[Miranda] (16:00 - 16:08)
So you weren't told what was going to happen in the evening. They'd say ”come downstairs and we're going to separate into separate genders and wear your nice clothes”.
[host] (16:09 - 16:27)
Elise is a hairstylist who started going to Tara yoga around 2010 after a fly came through her door. She was looking for something to remedy the stress of running her own salon. She attended various Tara yoga retreats, including Polarity, some years before Miranda. At Polarity, she had a bit of a surprise one night.
[Elise] (16:27 - 16:35)
I remember taking part in a ritual. There must have been about 60 people in the ritual and we were divided into separate genders.
[host] (16:35 - 16:42)
In one room, the women are told to disguise their identities from the men by wearing black veils over their faces and bodies.
[Elise] (16:42 - 17:22)
All the women laid in this formation and we all had our legs open. And then men were coming into the room and they had feathers and various other bits and pieces that they were allowed to use to touch us. But it definitely felt like that event was quite out of control. There was definitely a lot of sexual acts happening. There was never a real, you don't have to do this. They do kind of say you don't, but if you decide you don't want to, there's a lot of persuasion. This will be good for your spiritual development. This is your block. This is your thing to overcome.
[host] (17:22 - 17:27)
The purpose of the ritual is to evoke a particular kind of goddess. But at least...
[Elise] (17:27 - 17:51)
- I cried the whole way through. And afterwards, I just kind of went and hid myself away.
[host]
- And what were your feelings while it was going on?
[Elise]
- I found it really difficult, actually. I knew the whole idea of those camps is to kind of ramp up the energy between the men and the women, I think. And so I did know that I was going to be letting myself into something like that.
[host] (17:53 - 18:03)
Every retreat is different. Miranda's group didn't have the feathers ritual. At her retreat, the women were told to surprise all the men with a sexy dance they'd practised earlier that day.
[Miranda] (18:04 - 19:54)
We were told that we were going to offer them this selflessly and a nice kind of gift for them. And we were encouraged to dress up. And some of the women, especially the teachers, went in underwear or took their underwear off while they were in there. I wore a skirt, a short skirt and a top. And I remember that there was one woman who didn't feel comfortable, didn't want to participate and she was made to feel pretty bad. That this was her limitation she needed to overcome and this was her ego and she ended up just kind of sitting on her own in the room while everyone else went in and did the dance. And so the men were meditating in the hall. We went in, they put on some music, we started dancing and I remember dancing quite close to my first Tantra teacher. And him looking directly at my crotch. And I was very shocked and surprised in the moment, largely because this action, this behaviour, was so much in conflict with everything we'd been taught and told about Tantra and spiritual sexuality before. There was this idea that we'd been told that Tantric men, especially Tantra teachers, were this elevated type of masculinity that understood women, that adored women, that worshipped them, that didn't sexualise them and that they would treat you impeccably.
[host]
- Were you surprised by how sexual this camp was?
[Miranda]
- Yes.
[host] (19:55 - 19:59)
- Had you had any preparation that this sort of thing was going to happen?
[Miranda] (20:00 - 20:02)
- No, I had no idea that these things would happen.
[Michael] (20:09 - 20:23)
The overall atmosphere in the school was kind of great and it was kind of friendly, aspirational, even loving. There was a good sense of community.
[host] (20:24 - 20:39)
Michael went to the Polarity camp multiple times, including the same year Miranda went. The retreats followed a similar structure, including a ritual to honour Shakti, the female energy. Michael took part in the same type of veil and feathers exercise that Elise did.
[Michael] (20:40 - 21:17)
They had a ball with rose petals, which they could throw in the man's direction, which was a sign that they would be open to allow the man to touch them in different forms, including oral pleasure. The person I was with chose to go and have all stages so, from my end, it felt that she was in consent and she seemed to actually really enjoy the ritual and expressed joy and pleasure.
[host] (21:18 - 21:21)
But after the ritual, this woman came up to Michael.
[Michael] (21:21 - 22:08)
And she was really, really distressed and she cried for a whole evening and the night and she could not sleep. She was not upset with me because she realised that she actually ran into the room and made her choice of a man. But she felt very coerced into doing so. The way the preliminary workshops in the women's quarters took place caused some sort of psychological pressure for her, at least, that if she wouldn't proceed with the ritual, then she would not be accepted. So she really pushed herself way beyond her boundaries. It was really distressing for me and I felt really sad and guilty.
[host] (22:09 - 22:17)
This is the nub of it. From Michael's point of view, the women appear to be consenting, but some feel they've been coerced into consenting.
[Michael] (22:17 - 22:22)
Like nobody actually put handcuffs on someone and forced them into something.
[host] (22:22 - 22:25)
But with hindsight, Michael thought...
[Michael] (22:25 - 22:28)
I was fooling myself into believing, OK, there is consent.
[host] (22:29 - 23:16)
And once Michael realised this, he wanted nothing to do with Tara. We asked the Tara Yoga Centre to respond to the concerns you've just heard about consent at the polarity retreats. They didn't respond to the specific issues raised, but they told us they unequivocally condemn all forms of abuse.
[host]
I've seen photographs of Miranda at the polarity retreat, smiling broadly. She looks like she's glowing with happiness. It's smiling for the camera, of course, but not just that. She says she enjoyed most of the retreat. Both Miranda and Elise felt that, on balance, they were getting something good out of Tara and that it outweighed the shock and discomfort they felt about some of the activities. So Miranda and Elise stayed in the school.
[Miranda] (23:16 - 23:31)
I felt like I was less afraid of certain things. I'd raised levels of confidence because I got used to getting outside of my comfort zone. And you just have so many people around you who just are so lovely.
[host] (23:32 - 23:44)
And Elise was also feeling something that, for me, explains a lot about why people find it so difficult to leave this organisation, even after they've started to have misgivings.
[Elise] (23:44 - 24:03)
You always feel like the next thing you're going to get is going to be the thing that's going to completely change your life. And they'll be like, oh, this technique that you're going to get in this next year is going to be amazing. And then it's on to the next ones. It's always like a thing that's just around the corner that you really need to know about.
[host] (24:03 - 24:18)
If you just stick with the programme, a spiritual breakthrough awaits. It's something that Maria, the leading teacher at Tara, alludes to in a video entitled The Transforming Power of Pleasure, published on the Tara Yoga Centre's YouTube channel.
[Maria] (24:19 - 24:28)
Ecstasy is not so difficult with a little bit of training. Coming with many more benefits than you can anticipate.
[host] (24:29 - 25:01)
And Miranda has reason to think there might be something in that.
[Miranda]
I could see that the techniques they were teaching me were working. I felt very good after the classes, after practising some of their yoga and breathing techniques. I wanted to believe that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me at the time and inappropriate and hyper-sexualised, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand.
[host] (25:01 - 26:05)
Now, not everyone listening to this will relate to wanting a spiritual awakening. But we're all searching for something. A life partner, an amazing career, a healthy body, a cure for depression and especially a better sex life. When someone tells you that they can help us get the thing we crave, we often ignore the red flags, the toxic workplace culture, the overpriced health supplement. We ignore the warning signs because we want the thing that we think they can give us.
After the Polarity retreat, Miranda starts dating one of the teachers at Tara Yoga. Miranda feels like she is now kind of part of the inner circle. She's been promoted to the Advanced Women's group. The woman who leads it invites Miranda to another retreat, this time in a Romanian coastal resort. It will be a chance to meet people from around the world, members of other schools affiliated to the Atman Federation.
[Miranda] (26:06 - 26:24)
All of your food will be included. That a lot of wonderful spiritual things happened there, that I would get to meet people from all the schools all around the world. It was at the seaside and having a two-week holiday by the sea where I only paid for the flights. It sounded appealing.
[host] (26:24 - 26:35)
And she might even get the chance to find out more about the spiritual guide of the Tara Yoga School and the wider Atman Federation, a mysterious yoga mystic called Gregorian Bivolaru.
[Miranda] (26:35 - 26:56)
This person was being more and more set up as a kind of God On Earth figure with literally supernatural powers.
[host]
Miranda will be sworn to secrecy about what happens at the Romanian holiday retreat.
[Miranda]
Vowing that I wouldn't tell anyone about what happened inside this villa.
[host] (26:57 - 27:26)
But six years on, she's ready to tell us the whole story. We asked the Tara Yoga Centre to explain why Miranda was attacked as a liar at the meeting you heard a secret recording of at the start of this episode. The centre declined to comment. The teacher who you heard delivering the accusations, Bogdan Radasanu, did not respond to our letters and emails.
[host]
- Hi, is that Bogdan?
So I telephoned him.
[host]
- Do you regret the way in which you led the denunciation of your former student, Miranda?
[host] (27:32 - 27:39)
Next time on World of Secrets, The Bad Guru.
[Miranda]
And they said, you know, we're going to keep everyone's passport and when you leave, you get it back.
2. The Technique
[host] (0:03 - 0:23)
You're about to listen to the latest series of World of Secrets, The Bad Guru.
This episode contains explicit sexual content.
[Miranda] (0:25 - 0:29)
They said, you know, we're going to keep everyone's passport and when you leave, you get it back.
[host] (0:30 - 0:42)
Miranda is an English teacher from Oxfordshire. She's standing at a reception desk at a holiday complex in a Romanian seaside town. She hands her passport over and then the receptionist tells her...
[Miranda] (0:42 - 0:49)
You're also not allowed to use your phone inside. You could only take your phone when you left.
[host] (0:49 - 0:56)
Miranda says the woman behind the reception desk pulls out a Bible and it's as if they're in a courtroom rather than a holiday resort.
[Miranda] (0:56 - 1:20)
... placing my hand on the Bible and reading out the words that were given to me on a piece of paper at the time, vowing that I wouldn't tell anyone about what happened inside this villa. And that if I did, then I would face the spiritual and health consequences of my demonic action.
[host] (1:21 - 2:17)
What is going to happen at this villa to warrant such a vow? This is World of Secrets, The Bad Guru.
Season 6 of BBC Radio 4 Investigation.
I'm Cat McShane. Episode 2, The Technique.
It's summer 2018 when Miranda arrives at the Black Sea Holiday Resort of Costinesti in south-east Romania. She's here for a two-week stay at a yoga festival and the reason she doesn't immediately turn back when asked to give up her phone and swear on the Bible is the event has been recommended by one of the yoga teachers at a place she's been attending for the last few months, Tara Yoga Centre in London. Miranda's had a few misgivings about Tara. Some of the teachers have pushed her to interact with other members in a sexual way that doesn't always feel comfortable. But she tells herself...
[Miranda] (2:17 - 2:29)
Whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me at the time and inappropriate and hyper-sexualised, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand.
[host 1] (2:29 - 2:43)
And on the whole, attending classes has been a really positive experience.
[Miranda]
I felt amazing.
[host]
In a city where it's easy to feel lost, Miranda thought that in this very cool central London yoga centre, she'd found her tribe.
[Miranda] (2:44 - 3:02)
It was a friendly and community-minded place. All of these nice, smiley, shiny, happy, good-looking people. And there was this sense that these people cared and that they had this love and affection for you.
[host] (3:02 - 3:16)
Miranda's mum, Penny, has her misgivings about the yoga movement, but she keeps her thoughts to herself. She doesn't ask questions when her daughter, then in her early 30s, gives her only vague details about her trip to Romania.
[Penny] (3:16 - 3:31)
As a parent, you ask your grown-up offspring what they're doing, but you don't expect them to give you chapter and verse and you sort of leave a space in the conversation for them to tell you if they want to tell you more and if they don't, that's fine. You move on to the next thing.
[host] (3:32 - 3:37)
And besides, in Romania, Miranda won't be on her own. She'll be among her new community.
[Miranda] (3:37 - 3:49)
I knew that my teachers were all going and they had told me that a lot of wonderful spiritual things happened there, that it was at the seaside. It came highly recommended.
[host] (3:49 - 4:42)
The camp is run by MISA. It is the Romanian affiliate of a UK-registered organisation called Atman, the International Federation of Yoga and Meditation. Tara Yoga Centre in London is also an Atman affiliate. Its belief system is eclectic. Indian spiritual teachings, astrology, Christianity, like the swearing of a vow on the Bible. And like other schools in the Atman Federation, it practises what's called tantric yoga, a form of yoga thatpromotes the use of sexual energy in spiritual practises.
[host]
Now that Miranda is finally inside the Romanian holiday complex, she takes in her surroundings. Bunk beds, a hall for yoga. She's staying in a female-only villa for the festival. The men are staying elsewhere. The atmosphere in the women's half of the compound is great. We've used sound effects to help you picture the scene.
[Miranda] (4:42 - 4:58)
There was this sense of it being kind of a girls' holiday. There were a lot of people around, probably at least 150 women there, if not more. It made me feel part of something international and really pretty huge.
[host] (5:00 - 5:35)
It's 25 degrees outside as Miranda explores the rest of the site. Up to 6,000 people have descended on thisBlack Sea tourist resort for the yoga festival. In the centre of the complex, there's a huge marquee which is pumping out dance music. Miranda joins the long queue which snakes around the tent. As she enters, a security guard checks Miranda's ID. The music is deafening, but the crowd inside is sitting on rows of wooden benches, silently meditating.
[Miranda] (5:36 - 5:48)
And the music involved certain sexual noises and moans, and they had this music set as a background to acompilation of soft porn.
[host] (5:49 - 6:12)
Miranda says that at the camp in Romania, women were shown pornographic videos as part of a programme they were expected to attend. The camp is an extension of the sexual boundary-pushing that women had been exposed to back in the UK, or whichever country they'd been attending a yoga centre inspired by guru Gregorian Bivolaru. People like Beck, an Australian, would come across Bivolaru's teachings while living in India.
[Beck] (6:13 - 6:30)
And beautiful things happened. They had lots of stage productions, and they're very beautiful, and they're full of, like, semi-naked women in bikinis, and that's very beautiful. A thousand people meditating together is a really nice feeling. You know, it's beautiful.
[host] (6:31 - 6:51)
Beck attended this annual yoga festival on four separate occasions. Like many of the women I've spoken with, Beck was at a crossroads in her life when she got involved with this yoga movement. She was recently divorced and left Australia behind to look for a new meaning in her life, and this festival in Romania made her think that these people had the answers.
[Beck] (6:51 - 7:02)
Hanging out with people who are high on God love is kind of great. It's a little weird, but it's like, ”yeah, you see you're man, whoa! Maybe I want to feel like that, I don't know!”
[host] (7:06 - 8:19)
This isn't what you'd expect at a normal yoga festival, and I think if most of us encountered this, we'd get straight on the next plane home. According to Miranda, in the preceding months at the Tara Yoga Centre in London, she's been told she has to push her boundaries if she wants spiritual awakening.
Experts I've spoken to say that there's a cultural assumption that yoga, and the wellness industry in general, is a healthy and safe activity. So you let your guard down a bit. It's only a bit of yoga. How bad can it be? And because yoga encourages you to experience your body in a new way, you might be getting in touch with your sexuality in different ways. In short, if you're exercising more, getting fitter and healthier, you'll probably also feel sexier, and those are benefits that keep people hooked. And we're most susceptible, most likely to miss the red flags when we're seeking self-development, because we want someone to tell us what to do and push us in a new direction. It's all about breaking down boundaries.
[host]
Evenings at the camp are given up to a Miss Shakti competition. Shakti is the tantric word for femininity. This competition is, in Miranda's words...
[Miranda]
..a kind of hyper-sexualised Miss World, but the judging criteria being a woman's state of Shakti, as they would say, an embodiment of the divine feminine, the goddess. These shows went on for hours. At the beginning, there were probably at least 100 to 150 women in the competition, 30-plus performances of five minutes-plus commentary.
[host] (8:54 - 9:08)
The first time she came to this festival, Miranda just watched the Miss Shakti competition, but Beck from Australia actually took part as a contestant. Each stage, some women would be eliminated by the judges, and as the rounds went on, they got more and more sexual.
[Beck] (9:09 - 9:22)
It's super intense. Every day, just doing hours of rehearsal, the group rehearsal, and then your mini-group rehearsal. Some of the stages are just, they're just a kind of bikini stage show, you know, stand there with a fan.
[host] (9:22 - 10:02)
Apart from
Beck and Miranda, I've spoken to two other people who have attended stages of
the Miss Shakti competition, and I've read accounts from four others. Accounts
vary as to what happens at each stage, but it seems to get progressively more
sexually explicit. Two people told me they'd seen women parading naked on stage,
and two people told me that people simulated sex.
At the end of the competition, out of more than 100 entrants, one is crowned as
Miss Shakti. The winner that year was given the opportunity to live with the
guru of this huge international movement, Gregorian Bivolaru. The guru himself
isn't at the camp embodied, but followers are told he is there in spirit.
[Miranda] (10:02 - 10:24)
So they said that he is an omniscient being and that he can connect to different locations telepathically. So there was this sense of him being a non-physical presence in the house, a kind of supernatural support from this spiritual guide figure.
[host] (10:24 - 11:32)
I don't know how many followers Gregorian Bivolaru has, but if his network can attract 6,000 people to the festival Miranda's attending in 2018, he must be quite a big deal. So when Miranda is asked if she'd like to meet him at some point in the future, she says ”of course!” And at the women's villa, she's handed 30 testimonial videos of women who've already met him. The women speaking to the camera are naked. That doesn't shock Miranda. I didn't mention this earlier, but to attend her first weekend retreat with Tara Yoga in England, Miranda says she was asked to supply them with a photograph of herself semi-naked. To attend this holiday camp, she says she had to supply a photo of herself fully naked. The reason given is that the guru, Gregorian Bivolaru, needs it to read her aura. And since she's been here, she has been filmed naked. In one of the first testimonies that she watches, women who visited Gregorian Bivolaru, or GB, she recognises a woman she knows from the Tara Yoga Centre in London.
[Miranda] (11:32 - 12:26)
She was saying that, you know, she'd had this amazing experience and that GB had helped her to overcomethe se traumas from her past and it had been difficult, but she felt this deep sense of a level of healing in her soul.
[host]
But there was also something that struck Miranda as odd about this woman's testimony.
[Miranda]
She looked very sad, very distressed. What she was saying was completely in conflict with what she was clearly experiencing and feeling in the moment.
[host]
The video testimonies all end the same way. The women read out a statement.
[Miranda]
I will show that I'm a stupid, superficial, fluctuating woman if I ever forget all of these spiritual states.
[host] (12:27 - 13:20)
Miranda still wants to meet the guru, Gregorian Bivolaru. It seems surprising that rather than be concerned that something horrible might have happened to these women, she thinks they've all been through a wonderful spiritual experience.
[host]
So who is Gregorian Bivolaru?
[Gregorian Bivolaru]
”Exista atât binele cât ?i raul. Depinde însa ceea ce trezim ?i ceea ce amplificam.”
[host]
This is Gregorian Bivolaru speaking at a conference in 1999. Bivolaru was born in Romania in 1952. He has shoulder-length, steel-grey hair and wears aviator glasses and a buttoned-up peach shirt. It's ten years after the collapse of communism in Romania and in the post-Soviet era, the yoga organisation he has founded, called MISA, is a big hit.
[Michael] (13:21 - 13:25)
It filled a void in people's hearts or lives.
[host] (13:26 - 13:40)
Michael grew up in Romania. He's a former member of Tara Yoga, who in episode one told us about his experience at the Polarity Retreat. Michael was just a boy when communism fell but can see why Gregorian Bivolaru's yoga movement became popular.
[Michael] (13:40 - 14:10)
The promise was quite beautiful, like spiritual path and opening the heart and creating community, giving back, like really good values and attracted lots of people that were either spiritual seekers and they felt, oh, this is great and could be wonderful, or people who were psychologically wounded or had past trauma and they found something here that felt safe and promising.
[host] (14:11 - 15:22)
When Bivolaru
was a young man, he was interested in telepathy, parapsychology and yoga. The
communist dictator Nicolae Ceau?escu wanted to suppress alternative belief
systems and in 1982, he banned yoga in Romania. Bivolaru defied the ban by
teaching classes in secret, but he was caught and sent to a psychiatric prison.
He tried to escape but failed and was in jail for almost a year. Former
associates say he was treated with extreme brutality and his ill treatment made
them revere him all the more. But after the collapse of communism, Bivolaru was
able to run his yoga organisation openly and his popularity spread beyond
Romania.
In the UK, a group of his followers set up Tara Yoga Centre in London in 2001.
Today there are Gregorian Bivolaru following organisations in 29 different
countries, all operating under the umbrella of the Atman Federation. And
followers from these organisations come together at festivals like the one
Miranda's attending.
[host]
As the yoga festival in Romania draws to a close, according to Miranda there is a final ceremony for the guests staying at the women's villa, an organised lovemaking ritual.
[Miranda] (15:22 - 15:27)
We were told that it was optional, but if you didn't want to participate you had to leave and you had to stay out for the whole day.
[host] (15:28 - 15:40)
Miranda doesn't want to be ostracised for not taking part and she reminds herself that a core part of the teachings at the Tara school are that to achieve spiritual growth she must push her boundaries. So she's in.
[Miranda] (15:44 - 16:10)
The windows were closed, all of the curtains were drawn, they'd put down a lot of kind of black tarp, tarpaulin essentially, and then there were mattresses on top of that. Three women stood there naked, they were painted gold and they were playing this kind of very evocative trance-like meditation music and then we began the ritual.
[host] (16:11 - 16:27)
The ritual is a highly choreographed form of group sex between the women. After 45 minutes a timer sounds, it's announced: ”now is the first time doing the technique”. This is something Miranda was taught about in her women's group in London just before coming to Romania.
[Miranda] (16:28 - 16:57)
They spoke about the technique and these amazing spiritual states that they'd had from partaking in the technique with their partner and they would speak about physical transformations, people whose breasts are grown by doing the technique, that through doing this technique you can also assimilate the qualities of different zodiac signs and speaking also about the health benefits.
[host] (16:58 - 17:16)
Sounds amazing, right? But you might be less keen when you hear what the technique involves. There's no easy way of saying this and I hope it doesn't gross you out too much. It's drinking other people's urine. Followers are told it's a practise which has its origins in ancient yogic practises. This was the dubious sounding explanation Miranda was given of how it works.
[Miranda] (17:17 - 17:59)
Liquid has a memory and that after a certain amount of time of making love in a tantric way, the liquid in your body gets transformed and it holds the memory of not just the spiritual states that you've had but also holds the imprint of you as a human being and of your personal qualities, your zodiac sign, your physical qualities and that by drinking your partner's urine or elixir as they called it at this stage of lovemaking, you can absorb and assimilate physically into your body, into your cells and somehow use this to become a cosmic man or woman.
[host] (18:00 - 18:15)
Apart from that, fantasising about unusual uses of human urine is also a well-known sexual kink. Miranda notices that the senior women appear to be in a very intense spiritual state of orgasm after drinking urine.
[Miranda] (18:15 - 18:39)
And I remember at the end of the ritual, it was a really intense atmosphere and one of the senior women just kind of smiling and saying to me, you know, this is heaven, I think that we're in Heaven here. This is paradise, this is bliss.
[host] (18:43 - 20:26)
We wrote to
MISA, the organisation that ran the camp. They told us: ”we never asked for
nude photos, this is a lie!”. They denied that the camp created a sexualised
atmosphere and told us they promote, quote, refined, elevated, uplifting,
spiritualising eroticism, which is the exact opposite of raw, instinctual, even
degrading sexuality. They told us that although many of the people attending
considered Gregorian Bivolaru to be their spiritual guide, he was not the
spiritual guide of the camp. As for nakedness and simulated sex on stage, they said
they believe that, like many famous painters and sculptors, that the nudity of
a harmonious female body is something marvellous, something to be admired, an
expression of beauty that is present in the whole creation.
Most people who go to a Tara yoga class in London don't end up at events like
this camp. They just go along to their weekly yoga class and have no idea what
else is happening elsewhere in the movement. Some don't even know that
Gregorian Bivolaru is the school's spiritual guide, even though there's a whole
page dedicated to him on the school's website. It's entitled A Remarkable
Modern Yogi.
Things have moved incredibly quickly for Miranda. She says in less than a year she has gone from a high street yoga studio in London to an orgy and drinking urine in a holiday resort in Romania, and there's still more boundary pushing to come.
[host]
On her return to London, Miranda continues to go to her classes at Tara Yoga. Instead of rejecting the group, she decides to become more deeply involved. Believing in doing things that other people don't, makes her feel special, part of a community of believers who understand things most ordinary people don't.
[Miranda] (20:27 - 20:37)
I was seeing my friends less and less frequently. I'd effectively stopped going dancing. I wasn't seeing friends in other parts of the country or my family as frequently.
[host] (20:38 - 20:49)
Miranda also decides to start a job she believes will help her spiritual growth. It's at a place where some of the teachers at Tara work. It's called the Ecstatic Joy Temple.
[Temple presentation] (20:50 - 21:05)
Ecstatic Joy Temple, a world of intimacy, beauty and bliss. When you receive a massage from us, you will immediately notice there is something unique, beautiful and even mysterious about our therapists and the massage they offer.
[host] (21:06 - 21:11)
The Ecstatic Joy Temple is a topless massage parlour. It's just a ten minute walk away from the city of London.
[Temple presentation] (21:11 - 21:18)
Tantric massage performed in this way naturally heals the sexual function of both men and women.
[host] (21:18 - 21:26)
It's just around the corner from Tara Yoga. The Ecstatic Joy Temple website states they don't offer sexual services, but...
[Temple presentation] (21:26 - 21:35)
The female therapists are all very sweet and feminine. They will make every effort to relax you, pleasure you and to stimulate your sensuality.
[host] (21:36 - 21:41)
In September 2018, Miranda begins working there, getting paid to give massages.
[Miranda] (21:41 - 21:50)
I didn't like using body parts, especially breasts, to massage the guests.
[host] (21:50 - 22:56)
On the Ecstatic Joy Temple's website, the faces of the naked and semi-naked men and women are familiar to me. Not because I've ever been there, but because they are the faces of some of the teachers on the Tara Yoga website. Miranda isn't the only former member of Tara Yoga Centre I've spoken to who worked at the Ecstatic Joy Temple.
[Harriet]
You'd go topless and there wouldn't be any negotiating on that.
[host]
Harriet worked at the Ecstatic Joy Temple until she left Tara Yoga Centre in 2021. The Ecstatic Joy Temple doesn't give an address on its website, but Harriet agrees to show me where it was.
[Harriet]
- It's down here.
- OK.
[host]
Harriet's young, just 26, and has a kind of London look: boo-peering, sleek hair, fashionable clothes. She was only 22 when she joined Tara Yoga, a third-year university student. In a story that now sounds quite familiar, Harriet had taken a gap year in India, and on her return she wanted to continue yoga, so she googled around and found Tara.
[Harriet]
And it just sounded cool. It sounded really right up my alley.
[host] (22:56 - 23:10)
Tara wasn't just a yoga school, it was a community, and that was a big attraction.
[Harriet]
It mattered so much for me to feel connection with people outside of what I knew as my family. That was part of what I was looking for.
[host] (23:10 - 23:31)
According to Harriet, within a couple of weeks she starts dating one of the male teachers, someone who is over twice her age. And then only a couple of weeks after that, he encourages Harriet to work at the Ecstatic Joy Temple, giving topless massages. Harriet says he told her it would be good for her spiritual evolution.
[host]
- Can you describe to me who were the clients that you had to see here?
[Harriet] (23:33 - 24:07)
- Just businessmen, sort of 40s, some even older. They looked like they worked around here.
[host]
- And what did you have to wear when you were giving these massages?
[Harriet]
- Just some pants that they give you, like sort of luxurious sort of style. Silky, somewhat like provocative. Some would even say like if you can just go absolutely like no pants at all as well, so just naked when you're giving the massage it's even better, which I didn't do.
[host] (24:08 - 24:46)
Harriet got
paid around £30 a massage, but the clients paid between £150 and £300. To
Harriet, that sounds as if the temple is making a hefty profit. Despite the
romantic sounding name, the Ecstatic Joy Temple operates out of a rather
mundane looking converted office block. It's just a six minute walk away from
the Tara Yoga Centre. To operate legally, massage parlours are required to have
a licence. The local authority told me the flat where the Ecstatic Joy Temple
was based didn't have one.
Harriet told me that two teachers from Tara Yoga Centre were involved in
running it. Clients paid them in cash, and that's how she got paid too.
[Harriet] (24:46 - 25:31)
- I think back to it now, it was literally like, looks like a little brothel almost. This fancy place, red walls, low lighting, candles.
[host]
- So do you consider what you were doing here sex work now?
[Harriet]
- Yes, yeah absolutely.
[host]
- Why?
[Harriet]
- Just the way I was sort of controlled to perform a certain way, and it was very much to do with my looks and how I presented and my desirability. And the fact that it was a lot of these men who were obviously quite well off.
[host] (25:32 - 25:35)
- And the fact that you didn't have any control really over who you were massaging?
[Harriet] (25:36 - 25:38)
- Yes, yeah absolutely.
[host] (25:39 - 26:12)
The Tara Yoga Centre is a separate business from the Ecstatic Joy Temple, but it was a recruiting ground for staff. Both Harriet and Miranda knew about it through teachers at Tara Yoga Centre. Both organisations declined to answer our questions about their relationship. The Ecstatic Joy Temple also didn't respond to our questions about its lack of a licence.
Miranda worked at the Ecstatic Joy Temple for a few months. Even though she didn't enjoy giving the massages, she thought it was another boundary she should break in order to become a more spiritual person.
[Miranda] (26:13 - 26:43)
There was a kind of ecstatic sense of overcoming something, something that you were nervous about, that you were told was good for you and was spiritual. Once you then did it, I often experienced a feeling of euphoria. It was more than a feeling of achievement, sometimes dissociation, but often quite euphoric once you've gone through the thing that you were nervous about.
[host] (26:43 - 26:56)
And then, in June 2019, Miranda gets word that her guru, Gregorian Bivolaru, is ready to meet her. And there will also be something called an initiation.
[host]
- Did you consider rejecting the invitation?
[Miranda] (26:57 - 27:28)
- It didn't feel like an option to reject the invitation. I'd heard people talking about women who had failed the initiation. I knew that it was very bad, and that they were considered to have fallen spiritually. If I said no, I would become an outsider, and I would stand to lose the community that I was now so heavily invested in, that I had now devoted my whole life to.
[host] (27:32 - 27:35)
Next time, on World of Secrets, The Bad Guru:
[Miranda] (27:36 - 27:41)
We would need to send our final text messages to family, etc.
[Penny] (27:41 - 27:44)
This was when we became really concerned.
[Miranda] (27:44 - 27:49)
We should put on one of these pairs of dark glasses which had masking tape on the inside.
[host] (27:54 - 28:18)
World of Secrets, The Bad Guru, is a BBC Studios audio production. It's presented by me, Cat McShane, and produced by myself and Emma Weatherill. The executive producer is Innes Bowen.
BBC podcast ”The Bad Guru” - 3. The Transformation
[host Cat McShane] (0:05 - 0:22)
You're about to listen to the latest series of World of Secrets, The Bad Guru. This episode contains sexual content.
[Miranda] (0:25 - 0:38)
We were told to pack our bags for a couple of weeks and put them in the back of the car. We didn't stop, really. We drove through the night, but we didn't stop to sleep.
[host] (0:39 - 0:49)
Miranda is being driven across Europe with three other women. They're all followers of the same international yoga movement. Through the car window, Miranda makes out some road signs in French.
[Miranda] (0:49 - 1:00)
We were told that we could keep our phones, but when we got to the destination point, we would need to send our kind of final text messages to family, etc.
[host] (1:01 - 1:09)
After 16 hours, they pull into a service station on the outskirts of Paris. A people carrier pulls up beside them and two Romanian men tell them to get in.
[Miranda] (1:09 - 1:41)
They said, have you turned your phones off? And then we got into the car. We were told that there were dark glasses and hats in each of the seat pockets and that we should put on one of these pairs of dark glasses, which had masking tape on the inside, and put on a hat and pull it down over our eyes so that we couldn't see where we were going. We were told not to take these off under any circumstances unless we were stopped by the police.
[host] (1:42 - 2:04)
The yoga movement these women are part of is called Atman, the International Federation of Yoga and Meditation. Its followers revere a guru called Gregorian Bivolaru. In England, the movement's affiliate is a registered charity called the Tara Yoga Centre. Miranda, an English tutor from London, became involved through their studio in Clerkenwell.
[Miranda]
I felt very good after the classes.
[host] (2:04 - 2:10)
And they make her feel special.
[Miranda]
The people on reception were always very, very smiley, friendly, welcoming.
[host] (2:11 - 3:37)
Miranda's making this sleepless 16-hour journey in the hope that at the end of it, she'll get to meet the guru Gregorian Bivolaru himself. How has Miranda gone from attending some yoga classes in London to thinking it's OK to be driven around Paris by strange men while blindfolded?
This is World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru, a BBC Radio 4 investigation.
I'm Cat McShane.
Episode 3, The Transformation.
[host]
Over the past 18 months, Miranda has been pushing her boundaries in the name of spiritual enlightenment. She's been on a country house weekend retreat run by Tara Yoga.
[host]
- Were you surprised by how sexual this camp was?
[Miranda]
- Yes.
[host]
- Had you had any preparation that this sort of thing was going to happen?
[Miranda]
- No, I had no idea that these things would happen.
[host]
She's also had a free holiday at a yoga festival in Romania run by the local Atman Federation affiliate. The festival was for followers of Guru Gregorian Bivolaru. He promotes something called tantric yoga, the use of sexual energy and spiritual practises.
[Miranda]
Women said they're naked, they were painted gold.
[host]
And the reason she doesn't scream ”I'm a nice girl from Oxfordshire, get me out of here!”, is because there's always the promise that if she just carries on, if she just keeps following the teachings, something amazing is going to happen, a spiritual awakening.
[Miranda] (3:37 - 3:46)
I wanted to believe whatever they were doing was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand.
[host] (3:48 - 4:20)
So I should explain. Although Miranda has been attending the Tara Yoga Centre in London, this weird road trip to the outskirts of Paris started not in England, but Hungary. That's because Miranda has spent the last few months at a sort of commune there.
[Penny]
This was when we became really concerned.
[host]
Miranda kept up communication with her mum, Penny, when she was in Hungary. Miranda had been invited to the commune by a visiting speaker at Tara Yoga Centre. It was meant to be an artistic camp and a short stay, but she was gone for months.
[Penny] (4:20 - 5:10)
When she rang us, she'd be speaking in very hushed tones, as though there was someone around the corner who might be listening or as though she wasn't supposed to be ringing her family. And at that point, we thought, this is not good. I thought, shall I say something? I thought, shall I say, you know, ”Miranda, why are you whispering?” And then I thought, no, don't say that, because any intimation I give her that we are worried, I was very aware that it could backfire and that it might well push her further into the arms of whoever it was that was controlling her life.
[host]
So you were scared that she would retreat?
[Penny] (5:10 - 5:37)
Yes.
[host]
Miranda was being evasive over the phone, because according to Miranda, at this commune in Hungary, she was living under a strict regime. She was constantly cooking and cleaning. She says she had to ask permission to leave the commune. She was writing articles for magazines and being photographed. She says she was even persuaded to perform in some explicit scenes for an erotic film. So when she's on the phone to her mum, Miranda didn't know what to say to her.
[Miranda] (5:37 - 6:06)
I could see that this wasn't a normal life. So sometimes I struggled to think, you know, ”what can I send photos of to try and keep it normal and relatable?” I was lying about my whole life, and that is one of the hardest and most painful things that I've ever had to do, because how can you connect with anyone when you're lying about everything?
[host] (6:09 - 8:36)
It was while Miranda was in Hungary that she received the invitation to go to Paris for her initiation with the spiritual guide Gregorian Bivolaru. ”Beauty, I got news for you”. He's asking when you're going to visit him. This is part of the exchange of text messages between Miranda and the woman who claims to be passing on an invitation to her from the spiritual leader. He was just telling me. ”OK, Beauty, I'm very happy for you”. Looking at the messages, Miranda gives the impression of being keen to make it happen. But there's something very important that makes her apparent eagerness really worrying, something that explains the bizarre security arrangements around her trip, something that makes it very surprising that the guru is receiving visitors.
There's an Interpol Red Notice out for him. So this is what it says on the Interpol Red Notice:
”Gregorian Bivolaru, Romanian, born 1952, wanted by Finland on five charges of, quote, aggravated trafficking in human beings and four charges of sexual abuse”.
So in 2019, when these arrangements were being made for Miranda to travel to Paris to see this yoga movement spiritual leader, he was actually a fugitive from justice. And there's more. Bivolaru was sentenced to six years in prison for having sex with an underage girl.
One of the things about the BBC is we try to be scrupulously fair. So here goes. In fairness to Gregorian Bivolaru, I should say that conviction that the guru had in his native Romania for unlawful sex with a teenager, I've looked into this and it's a conviction with a female yoga student. But the victim claimed that the Romanian police had pressurised her into making a false statement saying she'd had sex with the guru. She now says she didn't.
In 2005, the Swedish government refused to extradite the guru to face criminal charges in Romania. This was because the Swedish court believed he was in danger of persecution in Romania for his beliefs. It wasn't until he went to France that he was eventually extradited. And even then, the Romanian state later had to pay 50,000 euros damages to Bivolaru for delays to his trial. So it's complicated.
[host]
Miranda knew about Bivolaru's conviction, but she believed what she'd been told by other members of the movement, that the guru was the victim of political persecution in Romania.
[Miranda] (8:36 - 8:49)
We were advised, rather than Googling him and looking at all of this fake propaganda, to speak to people in the school and to ask them questions and to hear about their experiences with him.
[host] (8:49 - 10:08)
And so Miranda hadn't Googled him. Eventually, Miranda gets word while she's in Hungary that she'll be travelling by car with three other women to meet the guru. It's important that I emphasise that none of the people involved in arranging Miranda's visit to this spiritual guru on the run were, as far as I know, teachers or leaders at Tara Yoga Centre in London. But it looks as if some of the Tara teachers were arranging visits to him for other students. I've spoken to four women who were encouraged by teachers at Tara Yoga Centre to visit Gregorian Bivolaru while he was a fugitive. One teacher encouraged a student via email:
”He invited you, as you know, and said to be very attentive because there are possibilities for demonic influences to stop you meeting him by generating fear. Take the opportunity to go, even if it's only one week. Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss”.
That woman, that email was sent to, tells me that she was also encouraged to go by Tara's top teacher and sometime director, Maria Porsfelt.
[Maria]
I've been on this tantric path for a bit over 20 years now.
[host]
Maria is a softly spoken dame who gives talks on the Tara Yoga Centre's YouTube channel, such as this one, entitled Open Couple Relationships.
[Maria] (10:08 - 10:23)
One of the areas of our life that we aim to integrate in a tantric practise, which is a practise that encompasses and integrates all areas of our life in our spiritual practise, would be that of love and relationships.
[host] (10:24 - 11:48)
I've also heard a secret recording where teachers talk positively about meeting the guru. One teacher describes her trip as a huge spiritual gift and a catalyst for a huge transformation in her life. And in the secret recording, I've heard Maria say she sees nothing wrong with organising a visit for a student to see the fugitive guru. As you'll hear later in the series, this is far from the most surprising thing I have discovered about this international movement, but I still find it astounding.
Maria was a trustee of the Tara Yoga Centre registered charity at the time. In that position of trust, it appears that she was encouraging the people the charity was meant to serve to visit a man who was subject to an Interpol red notice related to charges for aggravated human trafficking and sexual abuse. We asked individuals, who it's alleged encouraged students at Tara Yoga to visit Gregorian Bivolaru while he was a fugitive, for a response. None of them replied. The current directors of Tara Yoga Centre didn't address these allegations specifically, but told us due to legal proceedings, which Tara Yoga Centre quote, ”will vigorously defend, it would be inappropriate to provide any comment”. They also told us they condemn all forms of abuse.
[host]
When Miranda agreed to go to Paris to meet the guru, she didn't know anything about the Interpol red notice on him. So when she arrives in Paris and she's told...
[Miranda 2] (11:49 - 11:57)
...we should put on one of these pairs of dark glasses which had masking tape on the inside...
[host] (11:57 - 12:10)
...Miranda doesn't find it too suspicious. She's got used to weird things happening that push her boundaries beyond normal behaviours. And Miranda's been told that wearing a disguise will protect Gregorian Bivolaru, who Miranda now calls GB.
[Miranda] (12:10 - 12:40)
The explanation was that some women had been very ungrateful and after their initiation they had been possessed by demons. They had chosen to tell the police and that they had put GB and the school and the school's mission in very grave danger. And in order to avoid that ever happening again and to protect GB and to protect the school's mission, they had to do that now.
[host] (12:41 - 12:44)
Miranda's not the only woman I've spoken with who had this experience.
[Bec] (12:44 - 13:04)
They put dark glasses on and a hat on your head. They drive you around in circles in the city. The second you get in the car, ”glasses on, hat over your head, duck down! You've got to sit down! Down, lower, lower! No, you're up too high! Go down lower! No, pull those glasses, pull that hat back over your head!”
You've already done so many weird things, I guess. It's just like, ”OK, God, this is bizarre!”
[host] (13:06 - 13:15)
Bec is Australian and became involved in Bivolaru's network through a yoga school in India. Bec made a similar journey to Miranda's through the Paris streets.
[Bec] (13:15 - 13:44)
You think, if I said, ”let me out of the car!”, they would let me out of the car. But the fact is, you wouldn't be let out of the car. Because I've done it. I did it. I'm like,:
- You've got to let me out of the car now. Now!
- No.
- Immediately. Now. I'm sick. I'm going to vomit. I can't stand this anymore. You're going to let me out of the car now. Now. Now!
And then they're like:
- Just wait a minute!
And I'm getting progressively more and more distressed, more and more distressed:
- Just in a minute. Yeah, in a minute!
And then, like, 20 minutes has gone by. So, yeah, they will not let you out of the car.
[Miranda] (13:45 - 13:48)
And I was aware that we stopped and an automatic gate opened.
[Bec] (13:49 - 14:00)
And someone opens the door, takes you by the arm, walks you. You come inside the metal gate, the gate closes behind you, and then they take you by the arm with the thing over your head.
[host] (14:00 - 14:10)
The women are being taken straight to see Gregorian Bivolaru. Instead, they've arrived at a holding house, where they'll wait until he's ready to call them for their initiation with him.
[Miranda] (14:12 - 15:02)
The first thing that we had to do was to open our suitcases for them to be checked. We had to hand over our passports, mobile phones, credit cards, any other IDs. These were then foil-wrapped. They told us that they were doing that and putting them away in a cupboard so that the electromagnetic frequencies of these objects wouldn't interfere with the energy field of the house.
[host]
- And in terms of the passport, was that just something that you were used to?
[Miranda]
- It was seen as a deficiency. If you questioned anything, whereas if you were open-minded, accepting, surrendered, this was seen as a proof of your existing level of spiritual advancement.
[host] (15:03 - 15:22)
Miranda doesn't know it yet, but she'll be living in Paris for almost three weeks. In fact, Miranda won't touch British soil for some time.
[host]
The house sprawls across three storeys. A courtyard surrounds the property, which has tall, gated entrances on both sides.
[Miranda] (15:22 - 15:51)
Inside, on the basement floor, there was a yoga room. Upstairs, you walked into a kind of red carpeted, um, a kind of a landing area. Then there were a couple of bedrooms, maybe three bedrooms on that floor. Then there was this kind of winding staircase with a lot of bookshelves.
[host] (15:52 - 16:05)
According to Miranda, she's given an unrelenting series of bizarre tasks to complete before being deemed ready for the spiritual guide. First, naked photos with her date of birth on it, then watching testimonials of women who had been initiated by him.
[Miranda] (16:06 - 16:44)
We had to sign various questionnaires. There was one about what different types of orgasm you'd had. We were asked to record testimonies about all of the wonderful spiritual experiences we were having in the house and what a great time we were having. We had to watch mainstream porn and write reflections about the women and how we thought that they were exemplifying certain states of femininity.
[host] (16:45 - 16:54)
Pages and pages of non-disclosure forms are signed. Sometimes Miranda's asked to sign confusing declaration of consent late at night and a vow of secrecy is taken.
[Miranda] (16:54 - 17:16)
I hereby solemnly swear that I will never tell anyone about all of the wonderful states and experiences I've had. And if I do, I will face grave, even dire consequences on my future health and spiritual development.
[host] (17:17 - 17:41)
By the fact that you're hearing Miranda talk about this, you can infer that she later decides to break this vow. But back in Paris in 2019, she really believes bad things will happen to her if she tells anyone what happens in this house. And Miranda wants to follow their orders. She was given rules to follow, lots of rules. You weren't allowed to open the windows, or if the windows were cracked open, you weren't allowed to talk.
[Miranda] (17:42 - 17:58)
I did sometimes. When I was alone in the toilet, I stood on top of the toilet and cracked open the window and looked outside because I missed seeing the outside. We were, you know, shut in that building and I guess it was on some level some small act of freedom or rebellion.
[host] (17:59 - 18:09)
One day, Miranda spots someone she recognises at the house, the winner of what's called the Miss Shakti competition. It's something Miranda witnessed at the yoga festival she attended in Romania.
[Miranda] (18:09 - 18:12)
...kind of hyper-sexualised Miss World.
[host] (18:12 - 18:16)
Part of this winner's prize was to live with a spiritual guide.
[Miranda] (18:16 - 18:59)
She was completely isolated and she had quite short hair from having shaved her head recently. And she lived in a shed just outside the main house and I noticed that she didn't really come in during the day. She would sleep during the day and come in to use the bathroom and eat and do her yoga practise at night. And she was not thinking kind of normally or rationally.
[host] (18:59 - 19:11)
According to Miranda, the female leaders in the house give her a statement, written by Gregorian Bivolaru, that outlines the deficiencies he sees in this woman. Here's a flavour of what Miranda says she remembers about what was in the letter.
[Miranda] (19:11 - 20:16)
She was very chaotic. She couldn't be trusted. She was a liar and basically telling everyone to stay away from her. And he had her on a Tapas or a spiritual programme of doing ten days on the Oshawa diet, which is just grains and water and salt, and ten days off. And also on a Tapas of drinking her urine. And I definitely witnessed the staff, you know, the women who were volunteering there full time, being really abusive towards her, really unkind. So, yeah, you know, she was the winner of Ms Shakti, but she was completely unrecognisable to me compared with the woman that I had seen on the stage, you know, almost a year previously. She was a, yeah, a completely different person and definitely not mentally stable.
[host] (20:23 - 20:39)
Miranda has become used to increasingly strange situations over the year and a half since she joined Tara Yoga in London. But even so, the sheer scale of this strange house she's staying in in Paris takes her aback. The bedrooms contain multiple double mattress bunk beds.
[Miranda] (20:40 - 21:05)
And people were constantly coming and going. So you might have been sharing a bed with one woman for two nights, another woman for a week, another woman you'd never met before might just turn up and be in the bed next to you at 3am. So you just got used to this, to unexpected things. It's just kind of fairly constantly happening and nothing really being explained to you.
[host] (21:06 - 21:10)
Some have been here for days, some for months. Some seem to live here.
[host] (21:13 - 21:36)
And what sort of countries were people there from?
[Miranda]
Russia, Australia, Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Romania, Spain, Ameria, Japan, Thailand, Finland, Iceland, Slovenia.
[host] (21:55 - 22:38)
The meeting Miranda is expecting to have with the guru Gregorian Bivolaru is described by everyone as an ”initiation”. Miranda doesn't know exactly what will happen at the initiation, but she knows it will be a sexual encounter. She believes it will transform her in some way. So she sits in the holding house in Paris and awaits her fate. When Miranda tells me about her experiences, I find it hard to square the extreme things that Miranda is doing, without question, with the woman I see in front of me, who is clearly such an intelligent, eloquent and reflective person. But the search for spiritual enlightenment has a unique way of clouding people's judgement that leaves them vulnerable to cults.
[dr. Suzanne Newcomb] (22:38 - 22:59)
A lot of these experiences that deeply affect someone, it takes a long time to sort out. They can be very profound and even spiritual as well as being abusive and damaging. And when only one side of that interpretation is being pushed by all those around you, it's hard to acknowledge the parts that are manipulative and traumatic.
[host] (22:59 - 23:05)
Dr Suzanne Newcomb is an expert on new and minority religions and thinks yoga can leave students open to abuse.
[dr. Suzanne Newcomb] (23:06 - 23:20)
When you're in a situation where you think that people have your best interests at heart, that they know more than you, that they can lead you to some new experiences and understandings of yourself that you've never had before, you're in quite a vulnerable and self-doubting position.
[Miranda] (23:22 - 23:40)
It was a friendly and community-minded place. All of these nice, smiley, shiny, happy, good-looking people. There was this sense that these people cared and that they had this love and affection for you.
[dr. Suzanne Newcomb] (23:41 - 24:03)
There's a tendency for people who become very involved in an exotic new religious tradition, to idealise their teachers and see them as having these unique insights and access to an interpretation of reality that will be free from pain and suffering: ” If they just follow instructions, they'll get there”.
[Miranda] (24:04 - 24:18)
I've been told: ”If you want to have genuine spiritual progress for yourself with a genuine spiritual master, then you follow our teachings. And I did really want this.
[host] (24:24 - 24:34)
About two and a half weeks after arriving at the holding house in Paris, Miranda is told it's time. Miranda and two other women are finally going to meet Gregorian Bivolaru, but they need to move one more time.
[Miranda] (24:35 - 25:20)
You need to pack all of your things now into the suitcase because we're going to give your bed space to someone else. And you need to take a shower, shave all of your body hair, not use any deodorants, perfumes or creams, pack a toothbrush and a couple of changes of underwear and that's it, and get ready to go.
[host]
And how were you feeling about going?
[Miranda]
Very nervous. There was a lot of pressure. A lot was attached to this event. It felt extremely high stakes, but yet I had literally no idea of what was going to happen or where I was going to be.
[host] (25:21 - 25:25)
Bec remembers the journey she took to Gregorian Bivolaru's apartment in Paris.
[Bec] (25:25 - 25:39)
You're not allowed your phone or passport, you're not allowed a piece of paper or a pen or anything to write on or record anything in any way. You're allowed one clear plastic bag, not any perfumes, not any lipsticks, one clear plastic bag.
[Miranda] (25:40 - 25:57)
We were just kind of silent there in the car and the coping mechanism, I guess, which came to me was to recite a kind of mantra, I suppose, internally.
[Bec] (25:59 - 26:06)
You were driven into a basement car park, blindfolded, walked through the basement car park to an elevator.
[Miranda] (26:06 - 26:55)
We were told to not walk together, to not talk, walk one behind the other. And going through this door, we came into a kind of communal garden space with a pathway, you know, there was greenery. The apartment buildings looked relatively modern. And as we were walking through this garden with this plastic bag in my hand, with my toothbrush and two or three pairs of underwear and we were all wearing dresses, I can remember thinking:
”What would I do if I changed my mind right now?”
We came to a door on the left-hand side. We knocked on the door and waited.
[host] (27:01 - 27:38)
We contacted Gregorian Bivolaru through his lawyer to give him an opportunity to respond to the allegations in this episode. He did not reply. MISA, a yoga organisation associated with Mr. Bivolaru, strongly defended him, stating that he has been the victim of political persecution and false allegations and that his teachings are followed by more than 40,000 people around the world. They point out that in the case of his conviction for a sex offence, the victim now claims she was coerced by the Romanian police into making a false statement.
[host]
Next time on World of Secrets, The Bad Guru.
[Miranda] (27:39 - 27:43)
She said: ”Look, we do cam girl work and you need to pay for your passage here”.
[host] (27:44 - 28:08)
World of Secrets - The Bad Guru, is a BBC Studios audio production. It's presented by me, Cat McShane, and produced by myself and Emma Weatherill. The executive producer is Ines Bowen.
BBC podcast ”The Bad Guru” - 4. The Guru
[host] (0:06 - 0:11)
This episode contains explicit sexual content and some strong language.
[Miranda] (0:17 - 0:34)
He was wearing a dressing gown, I think with nothing on underneath.
[host]
Miranda is in Paris to meet the spiritual guide of her yoga school.
[Miranda]
That was the first time that I was seeing this seemingly mythical figure in the flesh.
[host] (0:35 - 1:01)
Miranda is a long way from the yoga class she joined just a couple of years ago, when she was teaching English at a university in London. Her journey started in 2017 at the Tara Yoga Centre in Clerkenwell. Since then, she's gone on retreats, she said she felt pressurised into participating in sexualised rituals. She said she's acted in an erotic film in Hungary and she's been brought to Paris on a bizarre road trip.
[Miranda] (1:01 - 1:09)
We put on dark glasses which had masking tape on the inside so that we couldn't see where we were going.
[host] (1:10 - 1:14)
Miranda's been in Paris for two weeks, staying in a house where there are severe restrictions on her freedom.
[Miranda] (1:14 - 1:21)
We had to hand over our passports, mobile phones, credit cards, any other IDs.
[host] (1:21 - 1:43)
And now, she's been transported to the apartment of the guru Gregorian Bivolaru himself, the man revered by Tara Yoga Centre and affiliates of the umbrella organisation, Atman, the International Federation of Yoga and Meditation. She's standing on the threshold with two other women. They're all here for what they've been told is their initiation.
[Miranda] (1:43 - 2:10)
And he looked just so much older and smaller and more frail than I had known about or imagined before, and it was extremely underwhelming. And he hugged me, I hugged him and I thought ”I don't want to do this”.
[host] (2:10 - 2:13)
But Miranda feels like she can't just walk away.
[Miranda] (2:13 - 2:26)
No one knows where I am. No one knows what I'm doing. My family have no idea, friends have no idea. I have nothing. I have a plastic bag with some knickers in it and a toothbrush.
[host] (2:26 - 2:35)
Miranda looks again at this greasy guy in his dressing gown. And then she wilfully crosses the threshold and enters his flat. It's like she's mesmerised.
[Miranda] (2:35 - 2:44)
Having that spiritual connection, spiritual knowledge, these kind of mystical experiences, that was a real focus for me.
[host] (2:45 - 3:19)
And if you're thinking that gurus taking advantage of female students is a story you've heard before, I have to warn you, this is a yoga network with a hidden side I have never come across before. Will Miranda do anything he says in her quest for spiritual salvation?
This is World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. BBC Radio 4 Investigation. I'm Cat McShane, Episode 4, The Guru.
[Bec] (3:21 - 3:30)
You walked through the basement car park blindfolded. I knew that the guru was a very, very horrible person.
[Miranda] (3:30 - 3:35)
I can remember thinking: ”What would I do if I changed my mind right now?”
[host] (3:40 - 4:33)
The blindfolds and security surrounding Miranda's visit to the spiritual guide sound bizarre. But not surprising if you remember who Gregorian Bivolaru is. He's a wanted man. In summer 2019, there's a warrant out for his arrest on charges of aggravated human trafficking and sexual abuse. In the mugshot of him on the Interpol Red Notice, he looks the same as he does in every other photo I've seen of him. Hair that appears greasy and unkempt, and always wearing 1980s-style aviator glasses.
When Miranda meets him, he's 67 years old. And if he was once handsome, that's faded. He weighs Miranda and the two other women that she's with into his apartment. Then he disappears into a back room. Miranda waits in the dingy corridor with overflowing bookshelves. After a couple of minutes, he returns with gifts for the women.
[Miranda] (4:33 - 4:41)
We were given some chocolate, a necklace with the yantra, the symbol of one of the goddesses, and some kind of poster.
[host] (4:42 - 4:50)
These cheap gifts aren't the experience Miranda imagined.
[Miranda]
I don't want to go through with this.
[host]
She knows the initiation will be a sexual encounter.
[Miranda] (4:50 - 5:16)
I am physically... not even not physically attracted, but I am physically repulsed by this person. And then it was like that was one voice, and then another voice came in, and it said:
”Don't be superficial. This is a spiritual master, transfigure him!”
[host] (5:17 - 5:47)
”Transfigure him!” For the past couple of years, Miranda's been taught that it's possible to turn something that isn't beautiful into something that is. It was part of spiritual enlightenment. And Gregorian Bivolaru is held up to be the pinnacle of the tantric yoga man. I have no idea how many women initiates have been brought to his apartment before Miranda or since, but I do know that it was going on five years earlier. That's because of someone else who's agreed to talk on the record about it.
[Bec] (5:47 - 6:01)
You basically sit in a room with dirty dressing gowns, for three or four days or three or four weeks until he gets around to you, sleeping in a single room where there's one double bed.
[host] (6:01 - 6:03)
Bec is the Australian we heard from earlier in the series.
[Bec] (6:04 - 6:10)
And you're either on the floor, floor floor, or on the bed, dirty bedding, dirty sheets, dirty dressing gowns.
[host] (6:10 - 6:37)
At the time of her trip to Paris, Bec was living in India, where she'd stumbled across a yoga school linked to Gregorian Bivolaru. She was at a crossroads in her life. She'd gone from being inquisitive about the school's teachings to arriving at Gregorian Bivolaru's house for her initiation. She was made to wait in the same bedroom that Miranda is in now, staring at Gregorian Bivolaru as he turns to go.
[Miranda] (6:37 - 7:01)
As he left the room, I felt, like, very dizzy. There was, like, disconnection of my physical body from kind of what I was experiencing in my head, which was something kind of semi-euphoric. And at the time, I attributed it to the high energy in the room. I was shaking, and I thought, this is the energy here.
[host] (7:02 - 7:19)
After a few minutes of this dizziness, Miranda takes in her surroundings. She realises that there is another woman in the room. She's naked. Miranda knows this person. It's a young Swedish woman she recognises from the holding house she waited at before coming to the guru's apartment.
[Miranda] (7:20 - 7:52)
And she looked just so different. She was behaving very differently. Very smiley, kind of quite ecstatic, but in a jittery kind of way, constantly moving around. I looked at her and I thought, ”Well, she's changed. This is that spiritual transformation!” I later found out that she left the school very soon afterwards.
[host] (7:59 - 8:04)
As the women wait to be called by Guru Gregorian Bivolaru, they can hear him through the wall of their room.
[Bec] (8:06 - 8:19)
And he's fucking in the other room for, I don't know, 10 hours, 14 hours, 20 hours. And then, I don't know, he's giving lectures, recording things. You can hear him speaking. You can hear people come and go.
[Miranda] (8:20 - 9:08)
There were no clocks, and there were blackout blinds. And it was very disorienting to not have any idea what time of day it was.
[host]
Every so often, Bivolaru brings in some food for the women.
[Miranda]
He brought in some expired tofu sausages and said: ”You know, that it's really bad karma to throw away food, so you need to eat them!” And he just handed us the pack of sausages. He didn't eat them, but he left them for us. And we all kind of sat around this pack of tofu sausages, and we were like, ”OK!”
host
One of the women in the group finally speaks up:
[Miranda]
And she said, ”OK, this is a spiritual test. We have to get through this!” And some of them ate multiple of these. They were fizzy tofu sausages. I think I ate half or one.
[host] (9:09 - 9:19)
In this small two-bedroom apartment, the only other place Miranda can escape to is the bathroom. But even this space is highly controlled with strict rules.
[Miranda] (9:19 - 9:50)
At one point, I'd used the wrong cloth or something. And a few moments or maybe an hour later, GB came into our room shouting and saying, ”Who was the last person to use the toilet, the bathroom?” I said it was me. He said, ”Come, come with me!” and was shouting and showed me, ”This is the cloth for this, and this is the cloth for that. Why did you do this? Are you stupid?” And I just froze. I felt very shocked. And then he stopped. And I just felt like he just kind of gave up and continued with what he was doing.
[host]
One of the other women in the bedroom turns to Miranda and says: ”You know, you actually got off really lightly!”
[Miranda]
He's normally much worse. That could have been much worse. And then she said: ”Every time that you think he's shouting at you or being harsh or unkind, there's a spiritual message there. So that's something for you to reflect on spiritually, how can you be more attentive”.
[host] (10:21 - 10:29)
Miranda says that at one point, a woman comes into the bedroom. She's just been having her initiation with GB, Gregorian Bivolaru.
[Miranda] (10:29 - 11:05)
She was naked, and she was crying. And she was just sitting there on the floor. And I said: ”Are you OK? Do you want to talk?” And she said, ”No, no!” And it was late, so we all just kind of went to sleep. And she stayed there. She was crying for a bit longer. And then after, maybe half an hour, maybe an hour, GB came back into the room. I opened the door. I saw the light coming through from the corridor and summoned her back into his room. And then I heard them having sex.
[host]
Miranda stays in this room for two or three days. She watches other women come and go. One time, GB comes to collect a woman for her initiation. As he leaves the room, he turns to Miranda:
[Miranda]
I was told that I would be next after her.
[host]
In some ways, it's astounding that Miranda stayed in the movement and allowed herself to get this far. But she's not unusual. It sounds as if there was a steady stream of women from around the world coming to see him. I've spoken to four women, including Miranda and Bec, who ended up in the fugitive Bivolaru's apartment for a so-called initiation. And I've spoken to a fifth who got as far as the holding house before insisting they allow her to leave. They're all intelligent women who love travelling the world independently.
[Miranda] (12:02 - 12:28)
I was given a drink. Someone said: ”I'll give you a big one because it's your first time”. And I was poured a glass of a kind of brown, quite thick liquid, which I was told was aphrodisiac. And it tasted kind of sticky and herbal, also a bit alcoholic.
[host] (12:28 - 12:36)
The other women tell Miranda that she should go for her initiation naked. So she takes off her dress and enters Gregorian Bivolaru's room.
[Miranda] (12:36 - 13:10)
The room was very messy, very cluttered. And the bed was surrounded by some kind of fairy lights. The sheets didn't look clean and my initial reaction was one of complete shock because we had been told so much about how this was a perfect living example of a self-realised tantric master.
[host] (13:11 - 13:22)
Miranda walks into the room and sits on the bed next to Gregorian Bivolaru. He takes her hands in his and they start something Miranda has studied back at Tara in London, the consecration ritual.
[Miranda] (13:22 - 14:21)
I kind of went on to autopilot. And we sat in the position that you were supposed to always sit in and closed our eyes and did the consecration.
[host]
Miranda repeats the formula she's been taught:
[Miranda]
And it was ”Lord God, I offer up to you here and now, totally and unconditionally, all the fruits of this action”. I still felt completely overwhelmed by fears and trepidations and disgust and nervousness. But I had been taught to repeat this consecration and that whenever I did that, it was right, even if I felt it was wrong. And he said: ”We'll begin then.”
[Bec] (14:29 - 14:44)
I did have sex with him and it was many hours, 14, 15 hours or something like all night long. And I had very strong, intense kind of meditational experiences. But by this stage, I've primed myself for this.
[host] (14:45 - 15:12)
And this was sex with many rules. First, the initiation starts with 40 minutes of foreplay, but only Bivolaru can perform it. After the foreplay, it's penetrative sex in seven different positions, each of which is supposedly related to the seven chakras of points of energy around the body. This is then followed by the technique or urination ritual. At this point, I'm going to mention again that the content of this episode contains descriptions of extreme sexual practises.
[Bec] (15:12 - 15:50)
I wanted to get the most out of it. I didn't want to be there going, oh, that was weird and gross. I wanted to have what experience there was to have. There were moments of like, this is actually gross or I'm not into this. He drinks directly from your urethra. And because I had never done that before and I couldn't let go directly into someone's mouth, he told me that I had demons inside me and that's why I couldn't piss in his mouth. And then he urinates directly into your mouth and you drink it. And this is a very special blessing and initiation.
[Miranda] (15:57 - 16:23)
I went into autopilot. I felt completely disconnected, I felt repulsed.
[host]
And even though you weren't enjoying it, why wouldn't you have stopped it?
[Miranda]
If you failed the initiation, then the implication was that there was something wrong with you, you were lacking, you weren't spiritual enough, you weren't part of the community enough.
[host] (16:23 - 16:32)
She forces herself to go through with the ritual positions and then, after they've been through three of the seven positions...
[Miranda] (16:32 - 16:49)
He opened his eyes and he looked at me and said: ”You've lost your erotic energy, we're going to stop.” I was exhausted. I hadn't slept. This was probably somewhere around 5 or 6am.
[host]
They do the urination ritual.
[Miranda (16:50 - 17:31)
That's the most important thing to him.
[host]
And then it's over. You might think that if you found yourself in this situation, you would never go back. But Bec went to see Bivolaru once more and another woman I spoke to went back a further three times. That's consistent with coercive control. An expert explained to me that because the women are isolated from their old lives and the love and fear they have for the guru, they have what's known as a trauma bond with him. They think that each time they go back, life will get better.
After Miranda's initiation is over, Gregorian Bivolaru gets up, goes to a different part of his room and offers her a small gift.
[Miranda] (17:31 - 18:12)
And he gave me a bag of scarves and a bag of underwear and told me to choose one. And I really didn't care. I really didn't want another gift. What I wanted was to speak to him because I'd been told and I'd come to believe that he was my master. So I just picked the first thing that appeared in the bag very quickly. And I remember he was quite angry and he said ”choose properly!” And then I said to him, ”I really want to talk to you!” And he said, ”oh, no, no, no, there's no time. Maybe next time!”
[host] (18:12 - 18:43)
Miranda tries to talk with him about her desire for the same spiritual freedom that he is said to have, but is disappointed by a banal response. Miranda has left everything and everyone else behind. Her English lecturer job at London University, her family in Oxfordshire, her friends. Her whole life is now the world of Gregorian Bivolaru and his followers, and she doesn't want to risk their rejection.
[Miranda] (18:43 - 18:51)
And I knew that if I went back, having failed, and I had to tell people that I had failed, I would be looked down on.
[host] (18:51 - 18:57)
Shortly after her initiation, Miranda leaves Gregorian Bivolaru's apartment and is taken to yet another holding house in the city.
[Miranda] (18:58 - 19:11)
I was completely exhausted. I hadn't slept for about 24 hours at this point.
[host]
She is told that she must record a naked testimonial video.
[Miranda]
And I knew that I could only say positive things.
[host] (19:11 - 19:58)
Miranda wants to get the film over and done with so she can leave this place. Miranda has given me the copy of a declaration, which she says looks just like the one she was asked to sign while in Paris. And on the first page of the declaration, it says: ”When I am writing this declaration, I find myself in a normal and natural state of mind, and I will never contest the fact”. It then says: ”On my own account, I now declare unconstrained of my own will, and throughout the entire period of my visit to Grieg” - that's what a lot of Gregorian Bivolaru's followers call him - ”I have never been raped by Grieg or any other person”. And it also declares: ”you have never been trafficked in any way and you have never been psychologically manipulated”. I wondered how you feel about signing this now.
[Miranda] (19:59 - 20:20)
I don't think that we had any choice. The irony is that you're signing something, supposedly a free will, that is so clearly incredibly coercive. It just highlights the complete delusion and irrationality of the whole thing.
[host] (20:20 - 21:15)
But even after signing the forms and making the video, she still doesn't feel free to leave. She's taken to a bus terminal in Paris and gets on a coach to Prague. She's accompanied by a woman from the Paris holding house who has arranged her ticket. By the time they arrive in the Czech capital, Miranda says she hasn't slept for a day and a half. Gregorian Bivolaru has told Miranda that, at her next destination, huge transformations will take place. It's called the Garden of Miracles.
When Miranda arrives at a villa outside Prague, she discovers for the first time what the so-called Garden of Miracles is. It's women performing as camgirls. They live-stream themselves in lingerie, dancing, stripping and touching themselves provocatively for the camera.
[camgirls presentation]
It's live. It's sexually interactive.
[Miranda] (21:17 - 21:30)
I don't think that there's anything wrong with camgirl work in itself, if that's what you're choosing to do. But I didn't know I was going to be doing it. I didn't choose to do it.
[camgirls presentation] (21:31 - 21:36)
The ultimate custom porn on any device. Call us and get into the action.
[host] (21:40 - 22:01)
Miranda says she was tricked into travelling to Prague and that she didn't know she was being recruited into the sex industry. If that's true, she is a victim of human trafficking, which is a criminal offence pretty much everywhere in the world. Arguably, she was also a victim of modern slavery, which includes recruitment of people for exploitation by means of deception.
[Miranda] (22:02 - 22:16)
So some of them would just want to talk, but most of them would want you to do something, touch yourself in a certain way or move in a certain way or say things to them.
[host] (22:16 - 22:25)
Sometimes working until the early hours, Miranda stands in a basement room in this villa in Prague in her lingerie, putting on a show for paying customers.
[Miranda] (22:26 - 22:39)
You had to make an effort. You had to try and make as much money as you could. And if you weren't smiling or you weren't looking active enough on the site, one of the coordinators would come and tell you off.
[host] (22:39 - 22:44)
Miranda needs to make as much money as possible because camgirl work is the way to pay for living in this house.
[Miranda] (22:45 - 22:53)
And you don't have to do it, but if you don't do it, you need to pay for being here and you need to pay for your passage here.
[host] (22:53 - 23:08)
The other women in the house, like her, have been involved with yoga schools affiliated with Atman. There's a woman from the Portuguese affiliate, another from the Hungarian school and several from Romania. The rules Miranda signed up to included a confusing system of orders and fines.
[Miranda] (23:09 - 23:36)
Leaving the fridge open was a €10 fine. Leaving a plate that you didn't wash up immediately was a €25 fine. Leaving a tissue in your pocket when you gave your laundry to them to do was a €150 fine. Being late to the site, even by one minute, was a €500 fine.
[host] (23:36 - 24:02)
But despite all this, Miranda still believes she's doing the right thing. Followers of Gregorian Bivolaru have this phrase called burning karma. What Miranda understood by this was that if you do something selflessly, even if you don't want to do it, you'll burn karma and it will help you on your path to spiritual liberation. And Miranda says she's been told that performing as a camgirl won't just benefit her karma, it would also help the men who are watching her.
[Miranda] (24:03 - 24:18)
It would awaken and transform the souls of the clients. And they would burn karma when they paid us, even if they paid us all their money. Even if they paid us money they didn't have, they were burning their karma.
[host] (24:18 - 24:58)
And in addition to the men burning karma, the money they spent on camgirls would also help the whole yoga movement and the spiritual guide Gregorian Bivolaru, who Miranda calls GB. The camgirl house will be Miranda's home and workplace for six months. The regime sounds oppressive, but when Miranda is given a month off, she doesn't ditch the movement. She splits her time between London and a camp run by the spiritual guide's followers in Romania, and then she returns voluntarily to the house. The reason she does this is she believes it is part of a spiritual programme set for her by her guru, and she doesn't want to fail. She's almost cut herself off completely from her family back in Oxfordshire.
[Penny] (24:59 - 25:09)
She kept the communication going, however sparse it was at various points. I'm going to say she didn't abandon her family.
[host] (25:10 - 25:36)
Miranda's mum, Penny, is getting phone calls from her daughter less and less frequently. Miranda only has intermittent access to a phone, and the calls are short. But Penny has enough mother's intuition to know that things are seriously wrong. After Miranda hangs up, Penny turns to her husband. They discuss whether it is time to stop trusting that Miranda will leave the yoga movement of her own accord. Has the time come to take matters into their own hands?
[Penny] (25:36 - 25:46)
Talk about how ghastly it was, and should we do something? Something rushed out there? Grab her and bring her back?
[host] (25:47 - 26:02)
But they decide against it. In Prague, Miranda is worried about leaving. She says she's been told that despite being employed in the house as a camgirl, she owes the house money. She is convinced that she is 700 euros in debt, and if she doesn't pay it back, she'll be banished from the yoga movement. If only her mother knew.
[Penny] (26:02 - 26:20)
If there had been any suggestion that there was physical coercion in some way, that she was in some sort of clear and present danger, we would have done something. But always coming back to this thing of, we're actually powerless here.
[host] (26:20 - 26:24)
Did you ever give up hope that you would get Miranda back?
[Penny] (26:25 - 26:29)
No, not once. I knew she'd come back.
[host] (26:30 - 26:44)
And perhaps Penny is right not to give up hope on her daughter returning home. You see, when Miranda first arrived at this villa in Prague, a flicker of a thought passed through her mind. It was when she was greeted by a couple of the women who lived in the house.
[Miranda] (26:45 - 27:03)
And they were both wearing long, floaty dresses, looking quite similar. And they came up to me with this kind of smile. And that was the first time that I remember thinking, oh God, maybe this is a cult.
[host] (27:06 - 27:40)
Thinking this
is a cult is one thing. Getting out of it, is another.
We approached Gregorian Bivolaru through his lawyer for comment, but did not
receive a response. MISA, a yoga organisation associated with Mr Bivolaru,
strongly defended him, stating that he has been the victim of political
persecution and false allegations, and that his teachings are followed by more
than 40,000 people around the world.
[host]
Next time on World of Secrets, The Bad Guru.
[Miranda] (27:40 - 27:41)
It felt like a personal attack. It felt like a witch hunt.
[host] (27:42 - 28:05)
World of Secrets, The Bad Guru is a BBC Studios audio production. It's presented by me, Cat McShane, and produced by myself and Emma Weatherill. The executive producer is Ines Bowen.
BBC podcast ”The Bad Guru” - 5. The Breakthrough
[host] (0:06 - 0:18)
This episode contains sexual content.
How does a yoga movement become a recruiting ground for camgirl work? Someone who was once involved in the business side has agreed to talk.
[Mihai Rapcea] (0:18 - 0:24)
Yeah, yeah. I did all kinds of stuff for people who were colleagues with me at the yoga classes.
[host] (0:24 - 1:18)
What he's about to tell us will help explain what happened to Miranda, a university tutor from England who joins a yoga school in London called Tara Yoga Centre.
[Miranda]
All of these nice, smiley, shiny, happy, good-looking people...
[host]
And through a series of encounters with different bits of the international movement it's part of, ends up working in a topless massage parlour in London and being taken to Prague to work in a live online pornography business.
[Miranda]
She said, ”look, we do cam girl work and you need to pay for your passage here”.
[host]
The women she works with in Prague are from around the world. Most if not all of them are, like her, students of an international yoga movement inspired by a guru called Gregorian Bivolaru. I've been trying to work out the relationship between the yoga schools, the guru and live stream pornography and now someone is about to explain how it works, right from the start.
[Mihai Rapcea] (1:19 - 1:27)
The video chat business, I think it started in 1999. It was a legitimate business in Romania at that time.
[host] (1:28 - 1:43)
Mihai Rapcea was close to the guru in the yoga movement's early days in Romania. He says he even acted as his lawyer. After webcamming took off in Romania, some individuals in the yoga school asked Rapcea if he could do the legal paperwork to help them set up their own operations.
[Mihai Rapcea] (1:44 - 1:53)
With girls from the yoga classes, you know, they met the girls there and they proposed, ”you can work for me”, but nothing organised.
[host] (1:54 - 2:08)
Rapcea thought he should consult their guru Gregorian Bivolaru about this. Bivolaru was against prostitution, but webcamming, the guru said, was different. In fact, he said he thought there might be something spiritual in this work.
[Mihai Rapcea] (2:08 - 2:51)
Because the girls have this kind of power of transmitting something spiritual. Ha! And he was very, very categorical on this, that it's prostitution only if you are physically involved in a relationship, sexual relationship with somebody and there's nothing wrong if you are making video chat. And I think he encouraged the girls to do this, proclaiming that in this way they become more feminine.
[host]
Mihai was doubtful.
[Mihai Rapcea]
That guy who is at the other part of the camera, he is jerking off, you know, this is his main purpose. So there's nothing spiritual here.
[host] (2:51 - 3:05)
And he says that as the years went on, he saw women from the yoga school being financially exploited in businesses where they did erotic performances. I had wondered if Gregorian Bivolaru owned these businesses, but Mihai is sure.
[Mihai Rapcea] (3:05 - 3:14)
No, no, no. He was involved only in writing books, studying and having affairs with girls.
[host] (3:14 - 3:31)
So Bivolaru doesn't own these businesses, but he encourages members of his international yoga school to work as camgirls, and they donate their earnings back to the guru and his network. Rapcea thinks it helped the movement grow internationally. Rapcea was concerned about what it had become.
[Mihai Rapcea] (3:31 - 3:32)
It's already a cult.
[host] (3:32 - 3:37)
He says in 2009, he told the guru it was time to get out of the sex business.
[Mihai Rapcea] (3:38 - 3:45)
Maybe we can go back to only simple yoga. We have enough. We have everything we need only to do yoga. And that's it.
[host] (3:46 - 4:38)
We wrote to
the Romanian yoga organisation MISA, which was founded by Gregorian Bivolaru.
They told us that Mr. Rapcea has long been a fierce enemy of their school and
Gregorian Bivolaru and accused him of making false accusations. We also wrote
to Gregorian Bivolaru through his lawyer. We did not receive a reply.
Mihai Rapcea left the movement in 2011. He wasn't able to stop the sex
businesses from operating, which isone of the reasons why in 2019, Miranda, a
university tutor from England, is working as a camgirl in Prague. But she's
starting to have the same doubts as Rapcea.
[Miranda]
Oh, God, maybe this is a cult!
[host]
This is World of Secrets. Season 6, The Bad Guru. Radio 4, Investigation.
Episode 5, The Breakthrough.
[Miranda] (4:40 - 4:47)
We should put on one of these pairs of dark glasses which had masking tape on the inside so that we couldn't see where we were going.
[Bec] (4:50 - 4:51)
We wouldn't be let out of the car.
[Laura] (4:52 - 4:53)
This is really, really, really big.
[host] (5:03 - 5:26)
After Miranda has done six months in the camgirl house, she goes to live in Hungary, in a commune of Bivolaru's followers where she'd spent some time before. Although she's dared to think that maybe she's in a cult, she hasn't decided yet. And this movement is still her whole life.
In February 2020, she takes a trip back to London to help out on an open day at the Tara Yoga Centre.
[host] (5:27 - 5:52)
But then... (radio) lockdown. Overseas travel is banned. Yoga classes are off. Miranda decides to stay in London for a few months, and then she moves to Oxford just a few miles away from her parents. For Miranda's mother Penny, it's a sign of hope that she might get Miranda back.
[Penny] (5:52 - 6:03)
She was back here, she wasn't talking about going abroad again, and she seemed happier. So I thought, OK, I think things are normalising.
[host] (6:04 - 6:32)
I've heard that sometimes when people decide to leave a cult, they have a lightbulb moment where everything clicks into place. That wasn't the case with Miranda. Although she's having doubts, she can't fully admit them to herself or leave the community of Gregorian Bivolaru's followers, so she starts attending the Tara Yoga Centre in Oxford. One of the people she meets there surprises her one night when they're having dinner, and they start talking about Gregorian Bivolaru, or as Miranda now calls him, GB.
[Miranda] (6:34 - 7:19)
And he said to me at some point, ”GB is always calling other people demonic. He's calling everyone else demonic and awful. What if he's the demonic one? What if he's the awful one?” And to me, that phrase was just sacrilege. I could barely comprehend that he had said that, and I was really angry. And then he went on to say, ”you know that it's a cult, right? You know that you're brainwashed!” And again, I was extremely annoyed and angry. It took me quite some time to process that. I think I didn't talk to him for a few days, but on some level, I was beginning to be ready to hear it. And gradually, over the next few months, it did start to sink in.
[Maria Porsfelt] (7:25 - 7:30)
Feel free to either write in the chat or even better to unmute yourself and ask directly.
[host] (7:31 - 8:07)
Miranda's journey to the heart of Gregorian Bivolaru's international movement started with the yoga classes she attended at Tara Yoga Centre. I've spent hours watching the centre's video lectures and webinars like this one, entitled ”The Transforming Power of Pleasure”, hosted by Maria Porsfelt, then one of Tara Yoga's directors in London. There's a clue in her talk about why so many people like Miranda might find it difficult to break away from spiritual organisations, even if they go on to be treated badly. It's the promise that if you stay, life will be amazing.
[Maria Porsfelt] (8:08 - 8:17)
Ecstasy is not so difficult with a little bit of training. Coming with many more benefits than you can anticipate.
[host] (8:18 - 8:41)
The lecturer, Maria, is a blonde, radiant dame who looks younger than her 40 years. As I stare at her, smiling sweetly and talking gently, it's hard to believe that she could ever be connected with anything sinister. And as for having anything to do with the cam girl business, well, exploring erotic pleasure without a partner, she says, is just not the tantric way.
[Maria Porsfelt] (8:41 - 8:50)
From a tantric perspective, in order to really have these profound experiences of orgasm, you do need someone else there. I just want to mention that we are a charity, and donations, however big or small, are always very warmly welcomed.
[host] (9:02 - 11:16)
You might
assume, from Maria's slightly disapproving tone about solo sex, that she'd want
nothing to do with the sort of webcamming business that Miranda and other
followers of their guru ended up working in. But in December 2023, something
comes to light that directly links a house once used for webcamming in the Czech
Republic with Maria and another senior figure at Tara Yoga. An investigation by
the Czech newspaper, says Seznam Zprávy, uncovers a webcam house 80 kilometres
north of Prague. And like the house Miranda lived in, most, if not all, appear
to have attended yoga schools affiliated to the Atman Federation. The
newspaper's reporter, Kristina Ciroková, gets hold of the purchase agreement
for the house. Unlike the house that Miranda lived in, this house is actually
owned by the Atman Federation. The agreement is dated September 2020. And the
two people who have signed the purchase agreement on behalf of the Federation
are two senior teachers from the Tara Yoga Centre in London, Maria Porsfelt and
Bogdan Radasanu. Both were directors of the Atman Federation when the webcam
house was bought.
As the guru Bivolaru's former lawyer told us at the start of this episode, the
sex businesses are usually owned by followers of Bivolaru, not owned by
Bivolaru himself or by the yoga schools. For a house like this to actually be owned
by the yoga schools and brother organisation is surprising and you might think
revealing. We asked the Atman Federation to tell us what they thought the house
was being used for. They didn't answer this question directly, but they did
say, the Atman Federation categorically condemns any kind of abuse. We also
asked Maria Porsfelt and Bogdan Radasanu what they thought the house was being
used for. Neither replied.
It's New Year's Eve and instead of going to a party to welcome in 2022, Miranda is at her parents' house in Oxfordshire, in her bedroom watching documentaries about cults.
[Miranda] (11:16 - 11:41)
I just knew, I knew in my heart and my bones and my body that I had to leave and I had to tell people. It wasn't an easy thing to admit. It was very difficult. It's very difficult to admit to yourself let alone admit to your friends and family and others that you made a mistake.
[host] (11:43 - 11:50)
The next morning, on New Year's Day 2022, Miranda sends a message to a friend of hers who was in Tara but left.
[Miranda] (11:50 - 12:02)
And she put me then in touch with some other people who had left and I knew, I mean I knew even before I spoke to her, but once I spoke to her it was confirmed that I had to leave.
[host] (12:04 - 12:06)
Miranda also called her mother, Penny.
[Penny] (12:08 - 12:14)
She invited me to come and have a coffee at a cafe in Oxford.
[host] (12:15 - 13:29)
On a winter's day in January 2022, Penny navigates her way through the tables and jolly groups of people, peeling off their coats, ordering coffees and hot chocolates. Penny sits down at a table opposite Miranda. Penny likes to think of their relationship as close, but the truth is that she knows very little about Miranda's life over the past four years. She doesn't know the full story of why Miranda abandoned a career as a university lecturer in London to seek spiritual salvation. She doesn't really know much about what Miranda was doing when she lived in Prague and why she rarely heard from her. All she knows is Miranda joined a yoga group in Clerkenwell, central London called Tara Yoga Centre and then became involved in the international movement of which it is part...
[ho Penny st]
and she told me in broad brush terms that the organisation was a cult.
[host]
Miranda takes a gulp of her drink and starts telling her mum the full story. Miranda tells her mum everything, even about her so-called initiation with the spiritual guide Gregorian Bivolaru, who Miranda now calls GB. The initiation was in fact a really traumatising sexual encounter. Miranda has no idea how her mum will react to her revelations.
[Miranda] (13:30 - 14:06)
And it was difficult, it was painful, it was embarrassing, it was vulnerable, not least because everything that I'd believed in so much and preached to other people about how wonderful it was and even tried to get other people involved in, you know, there I was, admitting that it was a cult, a sex cult, and that they abused me. And, you know, to admit that to my mum, to someone who I even invited to attend events there was, yeah, it was awful. It was horrific, extremely, you know, painful and embarrassing.
[Penny] (14:07 - 14:59)
And I just sort of listened and said, uh-huh. I mean, it's such a mixture of emotions. I mean, there's such relief that she saw the light. But what parent in particular, what mother would not feel in the very core of her being some of the emotional stuff that her daughter has been through. And, you know, as a parent, especially when they're very small, you want to protect them. You wish you could keep them in that bubble, that they never have to deal with the crap in the world. But, of course, they do. But you still retain, even when they're in their 30s, some of that desire, that wish that they didn't have to go through tough stuff. Now, this is beyond tough.
[host] (15:01 - 15:06)
And what was it like for you as a mother hearing her talk about going to Paris and GB?
[Penny] (15:07 - 15:46)
Ah, that really shook me, actually, because I had no inkling about all that. I was horrified, absolutely horrified. A shock that it can happen to your daughter with all the advantages that she's had. We somehow think that those advantages should protect someone from having to experience that. Well, the fact is, they don't. Nobody joins a cult. You just get sucked in so gradually, and it's done so skilfully that you don't realise.
[host] (15:46 - 15:49)
How do you feel towards the organisation now?
[Penny] (15:50 - 16:11)
Absolute revulsion. I couldn't despise them more. I think to hide behind something as ancient and spiritual as yoga is particularly reprehensible.
[host]
How would you describe GB?
[Penny]
A complete shit.
[host] (16:15 - 16:53)
Elsewhere in Oxford, Laura Hancock, an independent yoga teacher and founder of the Yoga Teachers Union, has spent years investigating Tara Yoga Centre and the wider international movement it's part of. Miranda hears that she's working with a journalist called Kat McShane. That's me. And as I explained in the first episode, Laura is the person who got me started on this investigation. Laura and I have exchanged hundreds of messages and spent hours on the phone together investigating everything we can about this yoga network.
[Laura]
Morning, Kat. I just wanted to say that I've updated the spreadsheet with a few more links.
I'm feeling a little bit unsettled about the Tara case.
[host] (16:58 - 17:17)
We did calls with people from Australia and Denmark as well as the UK, but we hadn't spoken to anyone from Britain who had the whole story and was willing to go on the record. We didn't know about Miranda. Now, just a couple of weeks after Miranda had stayed up on New Year's Eve watching cult documentaries, I get this voice note from Laura.
[Laura] (17:17 - 17:23)
Sorry, a slightly urgent message coming through. I got a message from Miranda late last night.
[host] (17:23 - 17:30)
Miranda had decided that the best way to stop other people being exploited in the same way she had been was to talk publicly about her story.
[Laura] (17:30 - 17:33)
It would be good to get your thoughts before I reach out to her. Cheers, Kat.
[host] (17:34 - 18:25)
A few days later, Laura and I have a Zoom chat with Miranda. We learn the true scale of exploitation. It's the story that you've just heard. There is a psychological reckoning for ex-members who have to reconcile all the good they think they experienced in the movement with what they know now. Some people I've spoken to still speak of their time in the movement lovingly. One person, even with tears in their eyes, the community had become their family, and sometimes they still miss it. Yes, they might feel that they have been manipulated, but many of the people they might now see as the abusers or the enablers were or are themselves victims too. Miranda wants to ensure that nobody else is manipulated. Going public will be part of that, but she also wants Laura to help her get the police involved.
[Laura] (18:26 - 18:48)
When I heard Miranda's story, for me, that was like, I cannot justifiably not take this to the police. This has to go to the police. So Laura talks with Miranda and other former members and then goes to Thames Valley Police.
[Laura]
Didn't end the meeting and be like, right, we're launching into investigation right now, which I think a part of me was kind of hoping they would do.
[host] (18:49 - 19:03)
Thames Valley Police do an investigation, but then it goes quiet. Thames Valley Police told us that they had done a thorough investigation but concluded that no offences had taken place in their area, so the case was filed.
[Laura] (19:04 - 19:11)
Like, it disappeared into the ether and there were no updates. We knew that, yeah, that wasn't going to be an effective route.
[host] (19:14 - 19:44)
In summer 2022, Miranda is being driven by a friend to Glastonbury. The atmosphere in the car is slightly awkward, because one of the other passengers is someone who is very involved with Tara Yoga Centre. The other passenger doesn't know Miranda's story and so goes on about how wonderful Tara Yoga Centre is and starts praising one of the teachers.
[Miranda]
I could just feel this anger bubbling up inside me.
[host]
Eventually, Miranda can take no more, so she tells the other passenger her whole story.
[Miranda] (19:44 - 20:52)
And she had the strongest reaction to it of anyone still in the organisation, I'm told, up until that point. The most humane and compassionate reaction. She was genuinely shocked and upset and she said almost straight away, ”I want to help, I feel that I need to do something about this”. I felt this, like, sense of solidarity from her that I hadn't felt from anyone else still in the organisation up until that point. And a few weeks later she told me that she'd been talking to a few of her friends and she was going to organise a meeting in Hyde Park and if I wanted, she could tell my story second-hand or if I wanted, I could go there and tell it first-hand to still current students. There was a group of, I don't know, about seven or eight people when I arrived and then more people came.
[host] (20:52 - 20:55)
Miranda decides she's going to address the group herself.
[Miranda] (20:56 - 21:51)
So whenever
you get in a car, you have to wear dark glasses with tape on the inside and
wear a hat and pull it down over your eyes so that you can't see where you're
going. I started to share my story and to speak. Most people were respectful
and understanding. ”Maybe we do questions up until now. How does everyone feel
about that?”
There was one person who wasn't understanding.
[host]
One of the teachers from Tara Yoga has turned up. He has a camera around his neck.
[Miranda]
It was horrible. It felt very intimidating speaking to people who are still within the doctrine that I was speaking about, most of whom were completely clueless of what was going on, others of whom may have been complicit. But quite a few people after that challenged the teachers. Quite a few people left.
[host] (21:52 - 22:32)
Maybe she doesn't realise it, but Miranda has declared war on Tara, and they are about to fight back.
(recording) This is a secret recording we've obtained. It's from one of a series of meetings Tara Yoga held about Miranda. It's the recording you heard right at the beginning of this series. One of the teachers, Bogdan Radasanu, reads out a letter. At the time, Bogdan is a director of the umbrella organisation that Tara Yoga is affiliated to, the Atman Federation. He is also one of the people I mentioned earlier who signed the purchase agreement for a cam girl house in the Czech Republic. The letter he reads out is apparently written by Gregorian Bivolaru himself.
[Bogdan Radasanu] (22:33 - 22:40)
The former student, Miranda, has cleverly taken advantage of your naivety.
[host] (22:40 - 22:43)
It's an attempt to discredit Miranda's account.
[Bogdan Radasanu] (22:43 - 23:07)
In order for each of you to be edified, we suggest you attentively listen to a recording in which you will hear what Miranda was saying, four years ago, about the experiences she has had, and which are of a completely different nature when compared to the statements she is now making.
[host] (23:08 - 23:14)
A recording is played. The audience is told it was recorded on Miranda's trip to Paris to meet the spiritual guide.
[Miranda - Paris recording] (23:14 - 24:52)
”In the house I feel very wonderful, and I feel like I'm stepping beyond the normal limits of time and space. I'm just very, very grateful, and I feel a lot of love there.
[host]
Miranda has heard this recording of herself.
[Miranda]
One of the things that always makes me cringe when I listen back to myself is the intonation and the accent, and I can hear it there, how I sounded like the teacher sounded and how I sounded like this kind of prototype, this cult personality, kind of robotic prototype.
[Miranda - Paris recording]
”I will never forget this experience, and if I do, I will then fit into the category of the superficial, shifting, and stupid woman”.
[Miranda]
I find it disturbing that they keep all of these recordings. It seems fundamentally unfair to play a coerced recording from someone's past to somehow suggest that they are lying in their present, that they think they have that level of ownership over my story, my reality, my voice. That was one of the hardest times of my life when those meetings were happening, having this sense that people are sitting for hours talking about you behind your back and lying about you. It was extremely disturbing. It felt like a personal attack. It felt like a witch hunt.
[host] (24:53 - 25:37)
We wrote to Tara Yoga Centre and Bogdan Radasanu. We put it to them that the way Miranda was denounced added to the picture of their organisation as a cult. They did not address this issue. Tara Yoga Centre told us they unequivocally condemn all forms of abuse.
[host]
Miranda wanted Gregorian Bivolaru to be arrested. She wanted no one else to go through what she's gone through. She's decided to sue Tara Yoga Centre. Miranda has reported her concerns to Thames Valley Police. Local yoga teacher Laura Hancock has also spoken to Thames Valley Police about her concerns. She feels frustrated that more hasn't been done.
[Laura] (25:37 - 25:44)
It's really hitting home. Like, I just need this out in the open and for, like, stuff to be done to change it.
[host] (25:45 - 26:09)
Bec, another former follower of Gregorian Bivolaru, is in London for a few days and I suggest we meet up for a walk in the park. Bec is the Australian we met earlier. She went to Romania for the yoga festival and had an initiation with Gregorian Bivolaru in Paris. She's trying to persuade the French police to investigate. Miranda is helping her, but Bec is finding the process frustrating.
[Bec] (26:10 - 26:27)
Well, a lot of women have spoken out. It's completely mind-blowing. And when someone says to me, you know, about this organisation, and I say, you know, women are held without their passports in houses, um, without mobile phones, without internet access for weeks at a time, someone says, why is something not done? Well, good question.
[Laura] (26:33 - 26:36)
Hi, Cat. I'm delighted. It's huge. It's huge.
[host] (26:36 - 26:50)
On the evening of 28th November 2023, my phone starts blowing up.
[Miranda]
I'm kind of in shock and I'm full of relief and I'm kind of crying.
[host]
The spiritual guide, Gregorian Bivolaru, is arrested.
[Miranda] (26:50 - 26:55)
I'm totally just like, what the... not being able to quite process that he's been arrested.
[Miranda] (26:55 - 27:14)
I'm just like, I can't believe he's arrested. This is, like, ten years of my life. I mean, I'm just... I don't know how I feel. I just feel, like, joyful and also, like, it's like a relief, but it's also, like, um... Yeah, it's just like being heard.
[host] (27:16 - 28:12)
We approached Gregorian Bivolaru through his lawyer for comment but did not receive a response. MISA, a yoga organisation associated with Mr Bivolaru, strongly defended him, stating that he has been the victim of political persecution and false allegations and that his teachings are followed by more than 40,000 people around the world.
[host]
Next time on World Of Secrets, The Bad Guru.
[Miranda]
That's the house and there's someone in that house. I can't... I'm kind of shaking a bit.
[host]
World Of Secrets, The Bad Guru, is a BBC Studios audio production. It's presented by me, Cat McShane, and produced by myself and Emma Weatherill. The executive producer is Ines Bowen.
BBC podcast ” The Bad Guru” - 6. The Return
[host Cat McShane] (0:24 - 0:49)
This episode contains sexual content, allegations of sexual exploitation and some strong language.
A man we're going to call Jacques, normally spends his weekdays out at work, but unusually on Tuesday 28th November 2023, he has a day off. At around 10 in the morning he takes a stroll around his neighbourhood. He lives in a suburb to the east of Paris called Villiers-sur-Marne.
[Jacques] (0:49 - 1:00)
I woke up at 11am and a minibus was parked just in front of my house. I was curious obviously.
[host] (1:00 - 1:15)
People are congregating around one of the houses further up the street. He watches in disbelief as armed police leave their vehicles and storm into the house. A few minutes later they come back out the front door bringing with them women one by one.
[Jacques] (1:15 - 1:28)
The girls coming out of the house, I wasn't able to count but at least 12, maybe 15, maybe 20. I was wondering, these girls, were they arrested?
[host] (1:29 - 2:49)
Later that day Jacques checks the news. He learns there was actually 26 women that came out of that house and they weren't being arrested. According to the police they were being rescued. From the news reports, Jacques reads that their removal was part of a huge operation involving 175 police officers carrying out raids across Paris. And the strangest part is that the people being arrested are all part of an international yoga movement or organisations affiliated to ATMAN, the International Federation of Yoga and Meditation. In total that day over 40 people associated with the yoga movement are arrested in France including the 71-year-old spiritual guide Gregorian Bivolaru.
A few days later the spiritual guide is charged with human trafficking, organised kidnapping, rape and the French criminal offence of organised abuse of weakness by a sect, an anti-cult law which doesn't exist in England. He is remained in custody. How on earth is a yoga movement at the centre of a mass police operation?
This is World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru, BBC Radio 4 Investigation. I'm Cat McShane,
Episode 6, The Return.
[Miranda] (2:51 - 2:57)
It was empowering to feel some sense of something positive and constructive happening.
[host] (2:58 - 3:16)
Miranda is one of the former members of this yoga movement who spent time in that holding house in Paris waiting for her initiation with Gregorian Bivolaru. She used to revere him as a guru. Then she became one of the several women who complained about him to the French police. She's pleased he's now been arrested.
[Miranda] (3:17 - 4:09)
I felt safer in a physical sense, I felt a sense of relief. But it was also accompanied by a concern, knowing that many hundreds of, if not more, of kind of pretty hardcore devotees would know that I personally had something to do with this. An understanding from having been in the organisation, knowing the rhetoric, knowing the groupthink, the way in which they will be blaming and demonising me. So just because he's behind bars, you know, he's still their spiritual leader, he's still their guru. They still try to be like him. Unless something changes within the way that that organisation operates, it's going to continue. It's going to keep damaging people.
[host] (4:18 - 5:11)
After I hear about the arrests, my mind immediately turns to what impact it's going to have here in the UK. Gregorian Bivolaru's umbrella organisation of tantric yoga schools, the Atman Federation, is based in the UK, and its English affiliate, a registered charity called Tara Yoga Centre, has studios in London, Oxford and Plymouth, and over the years has run classes in Cambridge, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Burton-on-Trent, Woking and Dublin. Gregorian Bivolaru has spent most of the past decade on the run from sex offence and human trafficking charges, but that hasn't stopped the Atman Federation and the Tara Yoga Centre from promoting him as a spiritual guide. Four women I've spoken to even say they were approached by teachers at the Tara Yoga Centre to visit Bivolaru for an initiation ritual, during his periods in hiding as a fugitive.
[female voice of a senior teacher from TARA Yoga] (5:11 - 5:28)
I have met Professor Bivolaru on multiple occasions over many years, and he always manifested with me a wonderful state of humbleness, an immense willingness to help me with everything that I needed.
[host] (5:29 - 6:33)
I've also heard this secret recording of senior figures at Tara Yoga Centre talking about their own contact with Gregorian Bivolaru, who they call Grieg. This recording was made in 2022. It's from a meeting called to denounce a former student, Miranda, who had made allegations about trafficking and abuse among Bivolaru's followers. Miranda had also visited the spiritual guide when he was in hiding in Paris. Her trip wasn't one organised by the Tara Yoga Centre, but one of the prominent women there, someone called Catherine, says she had been in touch with the guru on Miranda's behalf to arrange a second visit to him. Catherine says this was at Miranda's request, and Maria Porsfelt, the most important figure in Tara at the time, says she sees nothing wrong with arranging a follow-up visit to the fugitive guru. With Bivolaru still in hiding, no doubt it would, like the first visit, have been another clandestine trip through Paris.
[Miranda] (6:33 - 6:54)
We were told that we should put on one of these pairs of dark glasses, which had masking tape on the inside, and put on a hat and pull it down over our eyes so that we couldn't see where we were going.
[host]
And then time spent in a holding house.
[Miranda]
We had to hand over our passports, mobile phones, credit cards, any other IDs.
[host] (6:55 - 7:34)
It's true, Miranda did at one point want to return, even though the first time her meeting with the guru was a traumatising sexual initiation. Now she wants nothing more to do with him. She believes this is a cult. On the secret recording of the meeting, a male teacher also talks about visiting Gregorian Bivolaru.
[Bogdan Radasanu]
I meet Grieg about ten years ago.
[host]
The man who is speaking is Bogdan Radasanu, a teacher at Tara Yoga Centre. He's also a director of the Atman Federation Umbrella Organisation. The way he describes his visit to Gregorian Bivolaru suggests it was when the guru was a wanted man.
[Bogdan Radasanu] (7:36 - 7:43)
So security in private life is more, let's say, a concern.
[host] (7:44 - 8:43)
In some ways, it's surprising to hear the teachers at Tara Yoga Centre talk so openly about their contact with Gregorian Bivolaru. As I said earlier, Tara Yoga Centre is a registered charity. According to the regulator, the Charity Commission, the trustees of Tara assured them in 2020 that they had no involvement with Gregorian Bivolaru. I wonder what the reaction to Bivolaru's recent arrest will be at the Atman Federation and its affiliate, the Tara Yoga Centre. I type in Tara Yoga's web address to see if there's any announcement to reassure students. I see they've put out a press release about Gregorian Bivolaru's arrest.
It says they don't know anything more than what is being reported in the media and that they're following the situation closely. The reaction on the website of the Atman Federation, to which Tara Yoga is affiliated, is more bullish. Reproducing a statement from Atman's Romanian affiliate, they reply robustly to the accusations.
[male voice] (8:44 - 8:56)
None of the 26 alleged victims gave any statement against Gregorian Bivolaru or any other person. None considered themselves exploited, abused, trafficked, or the victim of any rape.
[host] (8:56 - 9:15)
It appears that even though Gregorian Bivolaru is arrested, both Atman and Tara are continuing with business as usual. Neither seems to be reflecting on their own connection with Bivolaru.
[host]
Can you hear me?
[Miranda] (9:15 - 9:15)
Hi. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you well.
[host] (9:15 - 9:46)
A few months after Gregorian Bivolaru was arrested, the French authorities have been in touch with Miranda. She's being called to give her testimony in France. I phoned Miranda just before she boarded her flight to Paris.
[Miranda]
I'm just having a sit down at Pratt.
[host]
(at phone): ”Absolute classic airport, vital pre-plane airport trip to Pratt.”
I'll be joining her there in a couple of days' time.
[host]
(at phone): So, look, what's happening in Paris this week?
[Miranda] (9:46 - 11:12)
(at phone): So, first up is the tribunal. Tomorrow morning we're going to see the judge at 10. And they told me that it will be just us and the judge and her clerk. So that's a relief. There's no legal representation from the defence. I'm not going to be cross-examined. They said, you know, the purpose of this is not to question your testimony. It's to see what the long-lasting impact is on you and also to identify the roles of the other kind of co-conspirators, the other key players in the whole operation. Because apparently they are claiming that they are also victims, as are their lawyers.
[host]
How do you feel about that?
[Miranda]
You know, I was just assuming that it would be like the things I'd seen on TV with kind of cross-examination and things. So it's a relief to know that won't be happening. I feel annoyed that I have to go. I wish that I wasn't having to spend all that time and money going to the place where I was traumatised. You know, the last time I was there, I was brought to a petrol station, service station, somewhere in the outskirts of Paris and then I was blindfolded everywhere else I went that wasn't inside. So, you know, I don't have fond memories of it. And I don't have, you know, good memories of kind of what happened to my life from there on.
[host] (11:12 - 11:53)
Maybe we can try and create, have some kind of better memory for you while we're there. Maybe we can have a glass of wine by the Eiffel Tower or something nicer than that. OK, well, listen, safe flight, Miranda.
[Miranda]
Yeah, for sure.
[host]
I'll be in touch soon. Thanks, bye.
[host]
As Miranda heads off to Paris, I think about the bits of the testimony she might be giving in France. She'll be talking about her initiation with the guru, of course, but will the French authorities be interested in how she learnt to revere Bivolaru at the Tara Yoga Centre in London? Or what she says about succumbing to pressure to take part in sexualised rituals:
[Miranda] (11:53 - 12:13)
We were told it was optional, but if you didn't want to participate, you had to leave and you had to stay out for the whole day.
[host]
And what she's told me happened after she was taken to a house near Prague:
[Miranda]
She said, look, we do cam girl work and you don't have to do it, but you need to pay for being here and you need to pay for your passage here.
[host] (12:19 - 12:25)
Two days later, I travel to Paris to meet up with Miranda in a park. She tells me about meeting up with the judge.
[Miranda] (12:25 - 13:36)
We went to a room adjacent to the judge's office. The judge was wearing a kind of pink sweater with daisies on and jeans. I really liked the judge. I felt that it's in good hands. So that felt like a huge relief and gratitude that the French authorities cared enough to do this and that they listened to us and that they looked at the facts and that they cared enough about us and about other women. She said kind of almost from the beginning:
”I'm not going to, you know, make you go through any specific questions around GB”.
And it was a relief because that's one of the most difficult parts to retell. She was assessing my, you know, the long lasting impact on my life. I also saw some photos of people that I knew who were involved, who were present at the arrest and that was very upsetting.
[host] (13:39 - 13:42)
So were they asking you to identify people?
[Miranda] (13:45 - 14:13)
Yes, even though I know the process is really long and it's far from over to know that we've taken a really important step in that and hopefully I won't have to come back. It's a relief and I feel like I can finally close one door or at least start to close it and open a new door in my life.
[host] (14:16 - 14:29)
As a way to help close that door, Miranda and I discussed going to visit the holding house that she was kept in before her initiation with Bivolaru. We both think it might give her some closure. So we drive east to the street she stayed at in a Paris suburb.
[host] (14:30 - 14:35)
Are you remembering parts of this journey?
[Miranda]
No, because I was blindfolded.
[host] (14:41 - 14:55)
We're going to a house that holds a lot of painful experiences. Do you think that seeing it and knowing the house is no longer operational, it's an empty crime scene, might in any way help let go of those associations and that pain?
[Miranda] (14:55 - 15:19)
I suppose there'll be a sense of relief in knowing that it's no longer the site of that same abuse and that no one else will go through what me or some of the other women that I know went through there. I was nervous this morning that the organisation might still have some kind of surveillance of that property. I think that's entirely possible.
[host] (15:21 - 15:50)
OK, this is the street. You can drop us here.
[host]
We walk along the street towards the holding house. Miranda's concerns that she will somehow be watched seems to me to be paranoia. Bivolaru and his associates have been arrested. We approach the house, expecting to see an abandoned building, perhaps with some police tape around it. But instead...
[Miranda] (15:51 - 15:57)
There's someone in that house. That's the house and there's someone in that house. I can't...
[host]
OK, let's move.
[Miranda]
That's definitely the house and someone definitely opened a window.
[host] (15:58 - 16:07)
Yeah, I saw that as well. Someone at the window who just opened and then closed the window when they saw us.
[Miranda]
I just want to get away from here as quickly as possible.
[host] (16:10 - 16:18)
Can you explain how you're feeling?
[Miranda]
I feel really nervous. I just can't believe that there's people still living there.
[host] (16:20 - 16:30)
We don't know who is living there, but Miranda suspects it's still Gregorian Bivolaru's followers.
[host]
And what would you be worried that they might do if they recognised you?
[Miranda] (16:30 - 16:36)
I just don't want to see them. And it looked like a face that I kind of semi-recognised. I'm kind of shaking a bit.
[host] (16:39 - 17:06)
Yeah, your bottom lip is trembling. It could be then that people have been arrested but then released and coming straight back. And Miranda's put up her hood and we're quickly walking away.
[host]
After walking away from the house, Miranda starts to regain her composure. She tells me why she was so upset to see someone in the window in a place she suspects is still inhabited by Gregorian Bivolaru's followers.
[Miranda] (17:06 - 17:16)
To know that there's still people sitting in that house carrying on about their daily life and cult activities makes me really fucking angry.
[host] (17:24 - 17:41)
It's so beautiful here. We're walking down the side of the Seine, we've got the Eiffel Tower in front of us. While I'm in Paris, Miranda asks me to meet her on the banks of the Seine, the main river running through the city. When I arrive, I see she's brought a couple of objects with her.
[Miranda] (17:41 - 18:11)
So I've got two necklaces here that I want to symbolically release, let go of into the river. One necklace which is from the short Tantra course that prompted me to search for Tantra when I came back to London. And the second one is a mala, which is a prayer bead. I did quite a lot of meditation. So yeah, I'm just going to say a few words to myself and let them go.
[host] (18:15 - 18:51)
I watch Miranda. She's in silent contemplation. She then opens her clenched fist and lets the two necklaces drop down into the river. She turns to me and her face is beaming. Her joy is infectious.
[host]
Other former members of Tara Yoga Centre tell me that they struggle with moving on with their lives. Elise is a hairstylist from Oxford who went to the polarity retreat in Somerset. Now that she's no longer part of Tara Yoga, she's having to work out a new identity for herself.
[Elise] (18:53 - 19:18)
I modulated my behaviour so much to fit in with them that I lost parts of myself that I'm now trying to reclaim. And that's been a bit weird. I have really angry dreams about the school or about Grieg. I feel quite angry with the teachers specifically because I feel like they know what goes on. Some of them want to bury their head in the sand.
[host] (19:27 - 22:03)
We wrote to
Gregorian Bivolaru via his lawyer to give him an opportunity to respond to the
allegations made against him. We did not receive a reply. MISA, a yoga
organisation associated with Mr Bivolaru, strongly defended him, stating that
he has been the victim of political persecution and false allegations and that
his teachings are followed by more than 40,000 people around the world.
Tara Yoga Centre declined to be interviewed for this series. We wrote to both
Tara and Atman, the International Federation of Yoga and Meditation. We put it
to both organisations that through their encouragement of pushing against
sexual boundaries and a cult-like veneration of Gregorian Bivolaru, they have
left some women vulnerable to exploitation. We also put to Tara Yoga Centre our
evidence that senior figures at Tara had acted as a conduit for Gregorian Bivolaru
and had encouraged women to travel to Paris to meet him for a sexual initiation
during his years as a fugitive. Tara Yoga Centre told us we unequivocally
condemn all forms of abuse and they told us that Gregorian Bivolaru does not
have direct contact with Tara Yoga Centre nor does he hold any decision-making
authority or influence over its operations or finances. They said that they had
been advised that due to legal proceedings, which they will vigorously defend,
it would be inappropriate to comment further.
The Atman Federation told us that it operates entirely autonomously of its
member schools and that it categorically condemns any kind of abuse. They also
said that as some of the matters we raised may be subject to legal proceedings,
they had been advised that it would be inappropriate for them to comment
further.
The Charities Regulator, the Charity Commission, told us that a compliance case
regarding Tara Yoga in 2020 gave rise to regulatory concerns, notably around
the trustees' governance of safeguarding procedures. They told us they therefore
provided formal regulatory advice and guidance to ensure they addressed the issues
we identified. They told us we are assessing new information to determine any
next steps we might take as regulator.
[host]
Hearing Miranda's story has made me realise that the search for wellness, for something spiritual, can leave people open to abuse. But it's also made me realise that even with an organisation as flawed as Tara Yoga Centre, the ordinary seekers got something good out of it, each other. How important to you is the community that the school offers you?
[Miranda] (22:04 - 22:36)
That was the most important thing for me. It mattered so much for me to feel connection with people outside of what I immediately knew as my family, what I knew to be spiritual. When you practise spirituality, you immediately open up a field to connect with people and commune. That was what I was looking for and it's what I valued. And the shared values and building friendships on that, yeah, that really mattered.
[Bec] (22:36 - 23:08)
It's really powerful, really, really powerful. You're doing the meditations, you're doing yoga, you're part of the community. It's funny, one of my friends from Tara, he and I, last year, I think both of us were really missing it. And so we were like, well, ”why don't we just try and gather our friends and why don't we practise yoga together? Why don't we do some meditation together?” It really felt like a family. Yeah, it would be great if they one day saw the light.
[host] (23:10 - 23:21)
And for Miranda, that chance to belong, to be part of something more than just herself, turns out it was always there, waiting without judgement for Miranda to come home.
[Penny] (23:22 - 23:32)
I've done a certain amount of Googling, as you do, so I've got an educated guess as to the stuff that went on and my heart goes out to you.
[host] (23:32 - 23:43)
Penny, Miranda's mother, never tried to interfere. Miranda's now back living in the same county as her family in Oxfordshire. There's still a lot about her experiences she wants to explain to Penny.
[Miranda] (23:43 - 25:11)
One of the reasons why it worked so well and has worked for so long on so many people is that it was pretty subtle. It wasn't like cults I'd heard about where they tell ”you to stop seeing your family or to stop spending time with your friends”. They didn't tell that to anyone, especially not in the beginning.But there was talk kind of throughout really about a spiritual family and birth family and that your spiritual family were the people who were on the same path as you, they understood. So there was this idea that your spiritual family was possibly more important than your birth family. They often said that there was this phrase that supposedly was from GB that no mother has ever become enlightened. They used that as a way of, obviously it's putting women and mothers down, but they also used it as a way of discouraging people from having their own families and discouraging women from having children. And family is not a spiritual priority.
[Penny] (25:12 - 25:38)
I think it speaks volumes for your skill as a communicator and also your wonderful commitment to family that you kept that going. I'm going to hazard a guess, which is I don't think they ever quite caught all of you. Do you think that's right?
[Miranda] (25:40 - 25:44)
Yeah, I think that's right.
[Miranda] (25:45 - 26:45)
Are you disappointed in me?
[Penny]
No, never. The reverse. I'm full of admiration for someone who can go through the experiences you've been through. And I know that some of them are unspeakably difficult to talk about. I have nothing but admiration for you. To then do what you're doing now, to bring it into the light and almost alchemise some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power. I think you're meant to do that and again, I am just so proud of you for doing that. Words can't really express how proud I am.
[Miranda]
Thank you so much for your support.
[Penny]
Well, you have it always. You know you do.
[host] (26:48 - 27:32)
World of Secrets The Bad Guru is a BBC Studios audio production. It's presented by me, Cat McShane, and produced by myself and Emma Weatherill. Executive producer is Ines Bowen.
Unit manager is Lucy Bannister. French language production, Adèle Umber. Sound designer is Melvin Rickerby.
Development producer is Emma Shaw. Development executive is Anya Saunders. Storytelling consultant is Janie Bartlett. Legal advisor is David Atfield. Editorial policy advisor is Matthew Elkingham. Commissioning executive is Tracy Williams. Commissioning editor is Dan Clark. World of Secrets The Bad Guru is a BBC Studios audio production.
Bonus material
Bec Sonkkila - from victim to plaintiff
The Australian Ashleigh Freckleton warned against MISA/ATMAN without disclosing the name of the cult in 2021 🔗 🔗 și 2022 🔗.
Today,
27.09.2024, another female survivor who, among others, was involved with MISA
on Australian ground, speaks out.
Crikey, "an independent Australian source of news", just
published Bec Sonkkila's story within the ATMAN Federation, MISA's umbrella organisation. 🔗 🔗
She joined the cult in India at the Mahasiddha Yoga School. Soon
afterwards she started to organise workshops in Australia and was drawn in
further and further.
In less than 3 years, Bec Sonkkila, the "once energetic,
high-functioning and social person", was "incapable of walking a
block from her house without having a panic attack".
In 2015 she moved to Finland.
She witnessed "inappropriate sexual behaviour from figures in the
organisation, such as what she saw as the coercion and manipulation of a young
woman into a sexual relationship with one of the instructors".
When she realised how widespread the abuse was, Bec Sonkkila tried to inform
the police and press in India, as well as the MISA leadership. Police and press
did not reply. Within MISA she faced public humiliations and in 2016 she was
expelled.
Bec Sonkkila is one of the speakers at the DeCult Conference who will take place in New Zealand from 19-20 October 2024.
According to the website of the event, "she testified in police investigations leading to the arrest of guru Gregorian Bivolaru in France in 2023. He is now awaiting trial on charges including human trafficking, kidnapping and rape, with separate legal actions pending in Finland and the UK. Rebecca has also participated in a German podcast and upcoming BBC documentary dedicated to the exposure of MISA as a criminal organization."
Not mentioned in the article
is that Mahasiddha Yoga
School, Bec Sonkkila's first contact with the cult, is the Indian MISA
branch not listed on the ATMAN Federation's website because the school did get into
trouble before in India with the local authorities. Many years it also offered
courses and workshops in Australia and Thailand.
This "School" is coordinated by Andrei Popa also known as Premananda, who
has been Gregorian Bivolaru's faithful disciple since 1989, already before MISA
was founded.
Shortly after his guru was arrested in Paris in November 2023, the picture
and bio of Premananda, as he is known in the cult, disappeared from Mahasiddha's website.
On Tripadvisor were repeatedly posted warnings regarding Premananda.
From Tripadvisor:
“Yes do Avoid Andrei Popa also known as Prema Ananda, Also avoid Roxanna Gheorghe who has taken over teaching his classes and I believe he takes a new spiritual name as the previous identity becomes over heated with accusations. Andrei's behaviour is duplicit. There are tens of complaints that i know of. I worked with Andrei for 5 years and found he never told the truth. It was simply impossible to tell what was for his own personal gain and what was for the suggestion of a yoga school.
Complaints range from allegedly locking a girl in a room for hours to have violent sex with her later, allegedly hypnotism, the suggestion was some kind of seduction by trance, allegedly sexual touch in classes, allegedly falsifying qualifications, allegedly encouraging women to quit their job as an accountant and work as a stripper, allegedly demanding and harassment for large cash money donations towards himself and his girlfriend Roxanna Gheorghe's travel arrangements, allegedly having women wait for many hours at a time for him to arrive in cafes or hotels, they are not allowed to leave, such is his control, allegedly telling a young woman to break up with her fiancé, allegedly commonly telling women to leave their relationship/job/life so she would run his yoga school with him, allegedly encouraging women to work in the sex industry, what appears to be public shaming and excess control and isolation of the women who work closely with him, allegedly a kind of house arrest, unable to use facilities or move about without permission, allegedly lied to about his sexual partners and therefore put as sexual health risk, allegedly uses prayer and a conversation with god to know if the woman he has sex with has a sexually transmitted disease, allegedly ignoring and pressuring female students who say no to sex, allegedly using the power dynamic of teacher to touch and interact with students in ways that aroused them when the classes are not advertising this kind of experience, making the claim that having sex with himself will bring enlightenment and the cure of any and all sexual and emotional and life issues.
Plausible deniability leaves a lot of room for abuses. Sexual assault if very difficult to prove when people are of consenting adult age.
In light of the singer R Kelly who is currently being prosecuted for his crimes against women, operating a kind of sex cult, I hope that more of those around Andrei Popa encourage the women to get out. Psychological and emotional abuse is difficult to see for the victim. To the victim it appears they are being helped and taught and led and loved.
I have seen a lot with this guy. I have also seen what he does to women who speak out against him and it is not pretty. Public shaming and the use of personal information gained in trust as a teacher to emotionally disrupt, physical intimidation, allegedly also the use of computer hacking.”
It is worth mentioning in this context, that in 2018, after her second
participation in a three-day tantra yoga workshop of Mahasiddha Yoga Rishikesh,
another young woman got drawn into the cult.
Shortly after this "push in the right direction" the
"Sales Manager" landed as sex chat performer "Vixen"
on Rampant TV.
In the same time she became the face of the MISA brand.
While Bec Sonkkila is out of danger and fights against the cult,
"Vixen" apparently is still part of it.