A detailed review of the atman/misa yoga cult by Uma Dinsmore-Tuli PhD:
Let’s start with the Atman International Federation of Yoga and Meditation,
a global organisation that provides a basis for communication and cooperation
between its many members in more than twenty different countries all over the
world. All the yoga schools and centres within the federation have the same curriculum
and the same so-called guru, Gregorian Bivolaru. The yoga schools go under
numerous different names in different countries and therefore they can be difficult
to detect, because they present themselves as cultural associations or ‘academies’
offering traditional education in yoga tantra and esoterica, all linked to a worldwide
‘Movement for Integration into the Absolute’ (MISA). Some of the names of the
schools, like the Mahavidya Yoga Centre (Austria) the Tara Yoga Centre (London),
and Associazone Tripura Sundari (Bologna) are named after powerful wisdom
goddesses, implying that they offer positive and empowering teachings about shakti
and tantra, but in fact this is profoundly misleading. The following link provides a
list of all the members of the Atman International Federation of Yoga worldwide:
atmanyogafederation.org/members.
I begin with this organisation because in the space of six weeks, early in 2020, I
received six testimonies of sexual abuses experienced by women studying at Atman
International Federation of Yoga and Meditation schools around the world. These
testimonies alerted me to abuses, including rape and trafficking in the Atman Yoga
Schools, and I realised with dread that I had referred to the Natha Yoga School
in the first edition of Yoni Shakti. I was horrified that I could have inadvertently
caused their suffering.
I needed to set the record straight, and to ensure that readers of Yoni Shakti
could not in future be misled into believing that any of the schools of the Atman
International Federation of Yoga were safe places to study yoga tantra. After
receiving the testimonies of the ex-Atman Yoga retreat students describing many
of the terrible experiences that they had endured, I felt that the best outcome from
their brave sharing would be to help other young women avoid becoming caught up
in such abusive organisations. The women who had testified worked together with
me to create a set of practical warning signals to share with others, things that they
wished they had known before they had entered the harmful environment of the
Atman International Federation of Yoga.
The morning after the second wave of testimonies from women in the Atman
Federation of Yoga landed in my inbox, I had a long telephone call with a colleague
in Thailand who lives close to the Agama Yoga on Koh Phangan, and had for some
years studied there with its founder, Swami Vivekenanda Saraswati (Narcis Tarcau).
Multiple accounts of sexual harassment and rape have been made by many women
who attended the Agama Yoga retreat over the years, and references to their reports
are listed at the end of this preface. My Thailand colleague had recently, and very
courageously, extricated herself from a four-year encounter with the damaging sexual
and emotional manipulations of a self-proclaimed ‘awakened being’ and tantric
master and had begun to recognise the patterns of abuse common to many ‘gurus’;
the Agama head swami Vivekananda had been trained by the Atman Federation of
Yoga founder, Bivolaru. When he established Agama in Thailand, Vivekananda
modelled the content of many of the training programmes on what he had learnt
with Bivolaru.
The young woman who managed to escape from the ‘secret initiation’, aka rape,
at the Atman Federation yoga retreat wrote to me some weeks after I first received
the first testimony. Meanwhile, I also heard the experience of another young woman
in the same yoga school. Soon afterwards I received further testimonies of a very
similar encounter from a woman who had attended Tara Yoga — the UK branch of
the Atman International Federation of Yoga. As each woman heard that I believed
what had happened to them, and was willing to learn more, they found the courage
to share. They wrote to tell me what had happened to them during the time they
were students, and their sharing empowered others to speak also. I promised not to
reveal their identities because they were terrified of retribution and violent reprisals
from people who support Bivolaru, the leader of the cult. It is rare for women to
escape from the powerful control networks of Bivolaru’s enablers. This is the voice
of one who did escape. She told me ‘I's not consent if you are too afraid to say no,’
and she reflected: ‘I learned the hard way that sexual violence is rife all around us,
permeating particularly within spiritual communities; not even the benevolently
inspired are spared the risk of hijack by the ego, and just because someone studies,
writes about and disseminates perfectly authentic and powerful teachings about
religion, spirituality, yoga, tantra, and meditation (perhaps even in good faith,
initially)... does not necessarily mean that they themselves embody all of the qualities
of an enlightened master, completely transcendent of their ego and without
any predatory desires, whether emotional, financial, spiritual or sexual in nature.
And just because such beings are utilising absolute authority over their followers
to exploit their human rights and engage in harmful behaviours and dialogue to the
detriment of their wellbeing, does not mean that they (or their enablers) necessarily
realise that they are doing so’.
The ‘absolute authority’ with which abusers wield power over their students,
followers and victims is a measure of their confidence that they are unassailable.
The absence of consequences for perpetrators of abuse contrasts starkly with the
vicious punishments, vilifications and other recriminations that often ensue when a
follower criticises the perpetrator.
The application process for attendance at the Atman Federation of Yoga school
camps involves submitting photographs in underwear, which is followed through
with public nakedness and sexualised ritual in groups that subtly at first, and then
with more vehemence and violence, lead women into a place of disempowered
confusion and vulnerability, because they can no longer even read the signs from
their own bodies. Women who studied at Atman were told that the semi-naked
application photographs were to enable the guru and senior teachers of the school
to ‘look at each person's aura and be reassured that students have enough energy
to tolerate the energy field of the camp’. On reflection, one ex-Atman Yoga student
told me: ‘Now I am pretty sure that this is how Bivolaru picks out young, beautiful,
innocent women to come to his house and get his so called ‘initiations’.
‘As they “trained” and groomed us for our special meeting,’ explained the
woman who had escaped from the Atman Yoga retreat centre, ‘it became clear the
entire “retreat” revolved around receiving the “initiation” [of Bivolaru urinating in
the student's mouth]. When I cried and said I just wanted to meet him, I didn’t want
an initiation, some of the women soothed me and said “no, of course he will never
make you do anything you do want to do. You don’t have to, it’s only if you want...”
She said that by the time the moment of the initiation arrives women are profoundly
sleep deprived and ‘full of unknown aphrodisiacs, and sitting naked in front of a
man considered to be their master.’ She asks, under these conditions: *... how likely
are they to say no?’
The process of reflecting upon her experiences at the Atman Federation of Yoga
helped this woman to notice cumulative erosion of boundaries that changed the
terms on which consent was originally given. Students were only permitted to attend
Mahavidya camps after completing two years of the weekly Atman Federation of
Yoga tantra course. ‘Teachers say that you have to be prepared to reach “a certain
level of knowledge and awareness” before attendance,’ explained the ex-Atman
yoga student. ‘But looking back’, she reflected, ‘I think this is to create a certain
level of familiarity necessary to be obedient to the hierarchy of the organisation, and
to consent to be manipulated by the teachers.’ This is a species of grooming.
The abhorrence their teachers expressed for menstruation: In both Agama Yoga
retreats and Atman Federation of Yoga centres, women have reported that menstrual
bleeding is not regarded as normal or healthy. One ex-student explained that
she was taught to question ‘How can bleeding ever be healthy? A wound bleeds
not because it is healthy.” In both of these yoga cults, women have been taught
to believe that diminishing blood flow during menstruation is a sign of spiritual
attainment. And while lessening flow in a heavy period may be a positive health
benefit, the underlying repulsion and shame that many women feel about menstruation
means that the ideal of suppressing menstrual flow altogether is commonly
sought in Atman Federation of Yoga schools and in Agama retreats and classes.
Students who have studied at Agama Yoga explained to me that although they
were given practical guidance on how to reduce heavy bleeding (by practising
inversions prior to the bleed, and modifying diet), and taught that the reduction of
bleeding (or the cessation of menstrual period altogether) was a measure of spiritual
attainment, there was very little information given about the subtle emotional and
psychic impact of menstrual cycles and menopause, and no respect accorded to these
cycles as sources of intuitive wisdom or guidance: ‘This was seriously lacking,”
explained one long term student, ‘it was classic spiritual bypassing. There was no
welcoming or respect for the embodied wisdom of the cycles. This is my complaint,
as well as the sexual exploitation of women. For me I would say it’s about power
and control of women, by men who often have sexual addictions, pretending that the
servicing of their own addictions is “tantra”.
In a perverse twisting of the power of the deep feminine Shakti, the ‘shakti circles’
indoctrination processes in Atman Federation of Yoga centres encourage women
to believe that complete suppression of the menstrual flow is positive.
Atman International Federation of Yoga (over twenty different countries
worldwide), also known as Tara Yoga (UK), Atman Yoga Federation
(Germany), Mahavidya Yoga (Austria), Natha Yoga (Scandinavia), and
in many places as Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute
(MISA): Gregorian (Grieg) Bivolaru (b.1952)
The Atman International Federation of Yoga and Meditation is an organisation that
provides a basis for communication and cooperation between its many members all
over the world. All the yoga schools within the federation have the same curriculum
and the same so-called guru, Gregorian Bivolaru. He has been convicted of sex
crimes in his home state Romania and is currently evading the law in France.
Bivolaru has been granted political asylum by Sweden and is continuing to teach
“secret retreats’ to selected young women who have reported rape, sexual violence,
abuse and coercive incitement into filming pornographic materials. He and his teachers
worldwide use multiple techniques of harmful practices that exploit vulnerability
and cultivate obedience. Their camps and classes provide girls for trafficking to
the secret retreat house of Gregorian Bivolaru. Women from all over the world are
selected and invited to ‘a secret initiation’ with the guru.
Many of his enablers widely promote the image of him as a persecuted yogi, but
personal testimony from victims, plus reports of his convictions and international
activities provide compelling evidence that all the accusations are valid. Bivolaru
and all of the yoga organisations guided by him have been expelled from the
European Yoga Council of the European Yoga Alliance, and also from the European
Federation of Yoga for the European Union. President Shri Yogacharya Ajita says:
‘My official resolution is that Mihai Stoian, Grieg Bivolaru and all people linked
to the MISA/ATMAN FEDERATION organisation are immediately expelled from
our organisation and that we stop their membership, because it has been proven that
they are not busy with Yoga in whatever form, that they even use Yoga as a cover for
illegal practices, that they do not respect the rules and standards of our organisation,
that they show an unheard lack of moral integrity, and cannot be convinced to
change their attitude.”
The yoga schools go under many different names in different countries and
therefore they can be difficult to detect, e.g. Tara Yoga Centre (UK), Mahasiddha
Yoga (Thailand). Natha Yoga Centres (Scandinavia and Latvia), School of Yoga and
Tantra Satya (Russia). The organisation also runs ‘pop-up’ intensive trainings and
retreats in India, where I have heard reports of aggressive ‘recruitment’ amongst
young female travellers.
