Yoga cult survivor who escaped before disturbing initiation shares red flags that alerted her to leave
The survivor of a Yoga cult is speaking about her horrific experience in a new documentary three years after the cult’s leader was arrested.
Gregorian Bivolaru ran the ‘Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute’, a cult that would initially present itself as a Yoga school before putting people through disturbing initiations.
This terrifying story is the focus of Apple TV’s brand new documentary Twisted Yoga which features interviews with several victims of the cult.
Ashleigh Freckleton joined this cult in 2018 without realising, believing she had joined a ‘Yoga school’ in London. She joined the school after a bad breakup, stating in an exclusive interview with LADbible that she was hoping to learn some coping techniques.
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What she didn’t know was that the ‘Yoga school’ she had joined allegedly held ‘transfiguration’ rituals for ‘integration’, which involved having sex with the self-professed guru Gregorian.
Ashleigh joined the cult thinking it was a regular Yoga School, but a trip to Romania raised her suspicions
Ashleigh found out about the school through one of her brother’s friends, stating that early on it was simply all about yoga and things ‘snowballed’ because she ‘trusted them, and trusted their judgement’. Prior to her full initiation she was taken on a trip to Romania, leading her to nearly leave the Yoga school.
She said: “I left Romania and was ready to leave the school and I was like ‘that was weird was that a cult’ I'm not really sure.I was in a very bad place and I took myself to the yoga class as a way to try and feel better because the practices have been so effective in kind of regulating my nervous system which we know is supported by science.
“I went into the centre and I sat down and they started playing this music. I was in a meditative posture and the feeling of calm and serenity that came over me and I started internally laughing at myself and going ‘how did you think this was a cult that's ridiculous this is the safest most wholesome purest serene place to be’ and like all of my doubts vanished.”
Several rules placed on the women in her trip to Romania raised alarm bells in Ashleigh
She stated that in her trip to Romania there were several bizarre red flags which made her think it was a cult, stating that whilst staying in a villa they were placed under numerous ‘rules’.
These were disproportionally aimed at the villa the women were staying in and included, curfews, banning people from swimming, not being able to go in the sun, and being forced to hand over her passport and sim card, with public shaming being employed when people broke those rules.
Later, in the initiation trip where she escaped the cult, they took her passport and made her recount with her hand on a bible: “I swear on my health and my spiritual evolution that I will not reveal any of the secrets or anything that goes on here.”
Ashleigh said of this: “People say ‘oh was their one single moment or one single red flag’ and there were heaps and I saw all of them but I kept dismissing them.
“It all felt very strange and controlling, you just felt it, my body just felt like this was off.”
After her return she continued with their classes and was invited on a trip to Paris. Whilst it was not discussed in these exact terms this was to be her ‘initiation’ and transfiguration ritual which would have involved having sex with Gregorian.
The initiation involved hours long tantric sex with Gregorian that was seen as a way of 'ascending' to become a higher being
Gregorian Bivolaru was wanted by Interpol at the time he was running the cult (Apple TV+)
Ashleigh was told this was an ‘opportunity to meet the Master’ and was told how lucky she was for this ‘honour’ however she decided to leave the cult prior to meeting him.
Speaking about the decision, she said: “It was a cumulative effect of me just becoming progressively more overwhelmed and more viscerally sort of sick and panicked.
“I just felt like reality was melting around me and there was these kind of two kind of voices going ‘this is your ego overcome the ego’ and ‘no, this is a cult, this is not safe, get out’.
“It wasn't that easy to get out. It took over 24 hours of kind of negotiating, playing by their rules, giving them what they wanted, having to write to him [Gregorian] knowing he would write abusive stuff back. I was writing in my journal to stay lucid because I was just so afraid that that I wasn't in control of my mind anymore.”
Not everyone was as lucky as Ashleigh to leave before the initiation, with several women having been forced to have ritualistic sex with Gregorian before being made to carry out sex work such as working as webcam models.
Gregorian was arrested in 2023 by French police on charges of kidnap, human trafficking, rape, and ‘abuse of weakness’.
Ashleigh said it 'makes her feel sick' to know how close she was to horrific initiation
Ashleigh and other victims of the cult bravely contacted documentarians to cover what happened, with the cult survivor saying it makes her ‘feel a bit ill’ to know how close she was to that happening to her.
She said: “It makes me feel sick. I feel really, really sad and just so much compassion and sadness for what these women have gone through and this kind of sickening fear of how close I was on the threshold of that being me.”
The documentary is filled with some utterly disturbing details of what went on in the cult, including mass orgies where women were made to drink urine and hours long ‘tantric sex’ with the group’s elderly leader.
Speaking about people’s misconceptions of why people don’t ‘just leave’ cults, Ashleigh compared the patterns of cults to those of domestic violence and coercive relationships.
She said: “You have this internal struggle, I was physically trapped but in many cases you're not physically trapped you're psychologically trapped and you're afraid of the repercussions of leaving and I was afraid. It wasn't just life or death, I was afraid for my soul because of all these threats and I didn't know what would happen to me if I tried to leave. I was becoming progressively more afraid and more paranoid and so then you fear for your safety because of the unknowns… you can’t ‘just leave’.”
Gregorian denies all charges against him and, in a statement, MISA denied all allegations of trafficking, abuse, manipulation or coercion.
Twisted Yoga is available to watch on Apple TV+ now.
Topics: True Crime, TV and Film, TV, Documentaries
Michael Slavin