From yoga to sex in front of the camera in the Czech Republic. Guru is wanted by Interpol

From yoga to video sex chat. Even so, the journey of the students of the Movement for Spiritual Integration to Absolutna, or the MISA yoga school, can look like. The search for how this can happen and whether women do it voluntarily is dealt with in the new episode of the journalistic program Seznam Zpráv – Terén by Kristina Ciroková.

In our country, the Resonance Spiritual School joined the Romanian MISA movement with yoga studies in four cities – in Prague, Brno, Olomouc and Liberec. We found out that her three instructors also performed on the sex chat.

As one of the foreign women, who also appeared on camera on the Babestation and Rampant TV websites, confirmed to us, everything took place two years ago in the family home in Černošice in Central Bohemia.

The Resonance association rejects connection with the sex business. “If someone does something for a living or does something in their free time, I can’t catch that. But it’s definitely not that it comes from the school,” Veronika Šupálková, chairwoman of the management board of the Rezonance association, told the Seznam Zpráv reporter.

But the number of MISA students from various European countries who appear on the sex chat can be counted by dozens.

A relatively new family house in Černošice in Central Bohemia. In the past, women used to walk to it from the station, filming sex chat videos there. One of them described the route to us and confirmed with a photo that we had found the right place.

“Yes, I’m sure about it (the house),” she wrote to a Seznam Zpráv reporter when she sent her a photo of the house.

The woman is not Czech. We know her identity, but we are protecting her. The Seznam Zpráv reporter described feeling like a victim of human trafficking. When asked if she voluntarily participated in the sex chat, she replied: “When you are forced, brainwashed and under the pressure of the sect and its leader, then it is not voluntary.”

According to Seznam Zpráv information, women who, according to photos, videos or Facebook profiles, are or were MISA students in various countries of the world, worked in the house in 2019-2021. There are new tenants living there now.

The old ones had a suspicious effect on those around them. The neighbors agree that there were foreign women in the house. But everyone was surprised by how they tried to hide.

“We all found it strange because that’s not how the neighbors in the area behave. To cover their fence with non-woven fabric to a height of about two meters and at the same time cover the pool area. They were such that they were hiding,” one of the neighbors told the Seznam Zpráv reporter.

The MISA movement was founded in 1990 by a Romanian yoga and tantra teacher, Gregorian Bivolaru. The yoga school now has branches in more than twenty countries around the world and tens of thousands of students. But many people call it a sect. Especially those who have spent some time in the community themselves. Like, for example, Bivolaru’s ex-lawyer and ex-student of yoga and tantra Mihai Rapcea living in Bucharest. “Yes, it is a sect, definitely. Because it has all the elements of a cult,” Rapcea claims.

According to German journalist and documentary filmmaker Markus Thöß, who filmed a report on the Romanian yoga school in 2017 for N-TV, the movement is dangerous because it also presents various conspiracies to its students. “Not only do they teach things about yoga, but they also teach conspiracy theories like New Age, they talk about the New World Order, they paint scenarios: What’s happening outside is all bad. And that scares people,” believes the journalist.

A German crew filmed an interview with Gregorian Bivolaru six years ago in a Romanian prison. The 71-year-old guru, whom his students call Grieg, was serving a sentence there at the time for having sex with a minor.

Initiation of MISA students

Bivolaru is a controversial figure. He was imprisoned several times in Romania. First during the communist regime, when yoga was banned in the country, and later just in 2017, when Markus Thöß filmed an interview with him.

Bivolaru himself and his followers talk about an unjust conviction, a political conspiracy and bullying of him and the entire MISA movement. “I was unjustly convicted of sexual intercourse with a minor, as a result of a fabricated act on the political orders of former Prime Minister Adrian Năstas,” Bivolaru claims in an interview with Germany’s N-TV.

After being released from a Romanian prison, the yoga guru disappeared and is in hiding again. At the request of the Finnish police, however, he is on the list of wanted persons by Interpol. “On 18/09/2017, Bivolaru was charged with several crimes (human trafficking with aggravating circumstances). The criminal proceedings are ongoing at the Helsinki District Court,” wrote Yrjö Reenilä, Senior Public Prosecutor for the Southern Finland Region, in an email to Seznam Zprávám.

Helsinki authorities are legally unable to release details of the case until the trial begins.

And how can yogis who perform on sex chats, where they undress at the request of men or masturbate in front of a webcam, get this job? The woman who gave the Seznam Zpráv reporter information about the black house explains it this way: “They said it would be great for my spiritual development.”

A total of three yoga instructors from the Czech Republic appeared on the sex chat in the past, Seznam Zprávy found out. Veronika Šupálková, chairwoman of the management board of the Rezonance association, claims that their school has nothing to do with it. And how do you explain that women from MISA appear on the sex chat?

“I don’t know that,” Šupálková told the reporter on the phone and took time to think about whether to give an interview on camera. After several days, she did not even respond to additional questions sent.

As for the Spiritual School of Resonance, it is interesting that it does not indicate a connection to the Romanian movement on its website. You won’t read about it being a branch of MISA there. But as the record from the web archive shows, it was different in the past.

Previously, the website stated the following: “Resonance was founded in 2001 as the Czech branch of the Romanian school MISA (Movement for Spiritual Integration in Absolute) Ing. Eduard Selea, who is one of the first students of the author of this system – Gregorian Bivolaru.”

In addition, Bivolaru’s biography and his articles on yoga, love and nudity are still posted on the school’s website.

The information that video sex chats are being filmed in the Czech Republic first appeared last year on a critical blog of former MISA students. One of the former instructors of the Resonance Spiritual School was also identified there, who at the same time appeared on the sex chat. Seznam Zpravy also verified her identity and contacted her. At first she claimed that she had no problem coming together on the subject. But later she wrote: “I have not performed at anything like that. It’s not me.”

Where are the women performing in front of the camera from? Do they get paid for it? And what does the so-called initiation look like with guru Gregorian Bivolaru? Find out in the introductory video.

Terrain

Photo: Jan Mihaliček, Seznam Správy

The times we live in, the personalities that shape it, the politics that frame it. Write us your observations, comments or tips via social networks under the hashtag terrain or by e-mail: [email protected].

Sects in the Czech Republic