After carefully watching the three-part documentary tendentiously titled “Twisted Yoga,” we are sending you the following right of reply, which we ask you to publish, given that you consider yourselves a company “known for professionalism, serious investigative work, and journalistic integrity.”
In the approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes of the documentary, you did not present a single opinion that contradicted the narrative’s predetermined conclusion, even though you hypocritically claimed to have provided “a fair and balanced presentation” and even suggested that you do not draw conclusions but leave that to the viewers. What conclusion could anyone possibly draw in the end, when they see only accounts and opinions that, without exception, converge in a single direction?
You stated in your response on March 12 that the documentary was produced “carefully and responsibly” following a “complex investigative process.” In reality, Andreea Pocotila, the so-called investigative journalist who speaks in the film about MISA and Gregorian Bivolaru, did nothing more than print out some papers – only those that supported the same predetermined narrative. In a most unprofessional way, she conducted her research in a completely biased manner and did not conduct, in the slightest, a true journalistic investigation. We point out the following flagrant and reproachable errors, which are very far from the “exhaustive efforts” you mention:
- Both of Gregorian Bivolaru’s convictions during the communist era and his forced commitment to a psychiatric hospital during the same period were, in each case, politically motivated, according to a decision by the Bucharest Tribunal (Civil Judgment No. 1271/July 1, 2011). This information is and remains common knowledge and was easily obtainable with minimal research, even if, as you mentioned in your response, Mr. Bivolaru’s legal representatives did not answer your questions. Ms. Pocotila’s assertion that “He was not jailed because he was a yoga practitioner. This is what we see from the files,” but rather for allegedly distributing pornographic material, is either evidence of journalistic incompetence or a blatant and intentional lie. All the flagrant abuses committed over the years against Gregorian Bivolaru are already thoroughly documented in the books of Romanian professor and researcher Gabriel Andreescu, an opponent of the communist regime who, after the 1989 Revolution, systematically studied the Securitate archives with the utmost seriousness – unlike Andreea Pocotila. Beyond that, convicting someone for possessing Playboy magazines is ridiculous in any democratic country; but naive viewers do not know and will never find out what the specific charge was because the film does not go into any detail about it at all, and so they can imagine anything.
- In 2006, the Swedish Supreme Court granted Gregorian Bivolaru political asylum and a protected identity not because the yogis had misled them regarding corruption in Romania (the insinuated presumption of incompetence on the part of the Swedish judges is absolutely ridiculous), but because a legal proceeding actually took place there, competent expert reports were requested in advance, witnesses were heard, including Madalina Dumitru, the so-called victim of Gregorian Bivolaru, whose statements, extracted under threat, blackmail, and pressure, subsequently led to the unjust conviction of the yoga teacher in Romania in 2013. There in Sweden, following this actual trial, the Supreme Court ruled that Gregorian Bivolaru would not be able to receive a fair trial in Romania and therefore granted him the protection of the Swedish state.
…we emphasise that the Program has been produced carefully and responsibly following an extensive investigative process. The producers have amassed substantial, detailed evidence to support the factual matters explored in the Program, and the series has been subjected to rigorous legal review throughout its development.
[…] In producing the Program, the production team has at all times undertaken exhaustive efforts to present a factually accurate and fair view of the activities of Gregorian Bivolaru. The allegations addressed in the Program are presented accurately and responsibly on the basis of substantial supporting evidence.
Even though we are not the legal representatives of yoga teacher Gregorian Bivolaru, as you pointed out in your response of March 12, given that all this information has been public and known for years, we consider it our duty to draw your attention to these strange omissions and serious distortions, which raise legitimate questions about journalistic integrity and the seriousness of the investigations regarding other claims made in the documentary.
In this documentary, you insidiously accuse the yoga schools within Atman (and implicitly MISA) of manipulation, while, in fact, you are misleading and manipulating the viewers in a treacherous manner, including through your choice of images and music, through blatant artificial drama, and through the intentionally truncated or distorted explanations you provide. A caption like “adoring young students revering their hero” under a photo that simply shows a group of people laughing cannot be considered a mere oversight at all, but a deliberate manipulation using deceitful suggestibility to lead the viewer towards the result you are choosing to promote, namely, that an ordinary photo represents something that validates your narrative but which, in reality, has no correspondence at all to what you attempt to suggest to the audience. We wonder if you consider everyone standing with their mouths agape or smiling broadly when a member of the British royal family passes by to be “in adoration” and “brainwashed”. We tend to believe that none of this will ever be insinuated.
You falsely claimed that “MISA’s relevant responses were included in the documentary.” Out of all the detailed responses we provided you, you chose to include only 5 lines (64 words) at the end of episode 3, long after you had arrived at the conclusions you had already insinuated in your documentary. MISA did not give you a “statement,” but answered all your questions in great detail, and furthermore provided you with a series of comprehensive supplementary materials. If you had truly intended to make “exhaustive efforts” and a balanced and investigative documentary, then such materials should have appeared in the program, rather than merely presenting the public with a predetermined narrative from the outset. At this point, it is clear that you had no intention of using this information, but only of “fulfilling your legal obligations” to request the perspective of the organizations defamed in the documentary, thereby protecting yourselves legally.
We can provide you at any time with all the documents that support our claims and we tend to believe your investigative journalists either pretended not to find them, ignored them or were truly incompetent, even though all these documents are easily and publicly available.
We request that you publish this right of reply as soon as possible.
MISA Press Office
March 25, 2026
Right of reply published on MISA website.