Women students reveal fascinating details on how MISA began and their personal relationship with its founder.
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Gregorian Bivolaru (b. 1952) is a Romanian yoga teacher, spiritual master, and the founder of MISA, the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute. Today, MISA is the oldest and largest yoga school in Romania. The ATMAN Federation, based in the UK, is an umbrella organization for different schools of yoga that teach the courses of Gregorian Bivolaru as well as other yoga courses. Each affiliate yoga school enjoys administrative and legal autonomy within its own country.
Bivolaru emerged as a popular yoga teacher shortly after the collapse of the Communist regime. On Christmas Day in 1989, a firing squad executed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife. Within two days, Bivolaru was released from forcible confinement in a psychiatric hospital for political dissidents. Ten days later, in January 1990, he gave his first lecture. In March 1990, he held his first public yoga class.
Many of my informants were university students at the time, and they said that thirty-three years ago they could take yoga courses in the university: “If they offered sports in their sports hall, they would also offer a class on yoga outside the school program.”
Bivolaru turned out to be more than just a hatha yoga teacher. He soon began to teach Hindu philosophy and share his worldview. D. noted: “We had a lot of questions about life, about God, about Grieg’s vision of life, about where we go after we die. And in his answers, we saw a man who was very wise, and very kind and intelligent. And we were impressed. Many people were waiting for him to come to give these little conferences. And he would have the answers to help guide us in our lives. And we would feel enlightenment in our soul.”
Many women noted Grieg’s charismatic presence. H. recalled: “Well, first time when I saw him it was at a conference… it was so powerful… I was very, very impressed… Grieg is so smart, he is a genius, he knows everything from so many fields, and he can explain everything so well.”
N. recalled the extraordinary success of Grieg’s early lectures on esoteric topics: “Every Monday, after the advanced yoga class, Grieg had these meetings in the biggest yoga hall in Bucharest, where he would stay and talk with people, often for two or three days. He didn’t really take any breaks; he would eat there in the hall and offer to share his food with us. I was impressed by his resilience, his willingness to help others. We were lining up, asking his advice… We slept in the hall, waiting to speak with him. We [each] had a number and were waiting our turn.”
D. commented on his kindness: “I was impressed by… the kindness and the love that I felt in his presence… I just felt like I was in a space that I could call home… like I could rest. I had found something I was searching for all over… You can ask anything in any… area of interest, and he can answer anything. He reads a lot, he loves books. This combination of modesty and intelligence and kindness and love that he is emanating, it’s so touching. Convincing, let’s say.”

In the 1990s MISA organized “yoga spiritual holiday” camps at the seaside town of Costinești in August, and in the mountains of Herculane in May. R. described this period: “When I was 16, in high school… I heard about it on a radio program. Somebody was so enthusiastic about the camp held in Costinești at the seaside… saying she never saw people so happy and joyful… And one year later my friend from high school came by with some printed courses… about vegetarian diet and spiritual resonance… And for us—just two or three years after the revolution, after the Communist regime—it was something out of the box completely!”
One of Bivolaru’s first female deputy yoga instructors gave a vivid description of the dynamic growth of his yoga school in Bucharest: “[Grieg] was teaching every week, several times in the first year, two times in the second year, and then only our class. There was a super big demand of teachers of yoga all over… Our generation was very thirsty for spirituality [after] how dry we were kept by the Communists. When we started yoga, we were so many that we could not fit into the Sports Hall—we were more than 600 persons in a room practicing yoga with him. So, he had to do it over three days. Then some of his senior teachers would teach the practice and he would come only for theory. And only two years after I started, he asked me to teach the first-year yoga class.”
Adina Stoian, who is part of the women’s Tantra course, gave a fascinating account of her conversion experience as a young university student: “I was 20… two years into my university [Polytechnic University in Bucharest ]… and I went to the first lecture Grieg ever gave on January 12, 1990… in the students’ hall. It was so full, this hall. I didn’t manage to get a place. But I knew the students’ hall, so I went up the back stairs and sat at the back of the stage with my boyfriend. We were behind the screen, and there was Grieg and two of his senior students sitting with their backs to us, facing the audience… And so, I could hear him, but I didn’t see him. He started to speak to us, telling us, ‘You are more than the physical body.’ (I already had accepted this idea because… I was familiar with the bioenergetic structure and with how to see auras). But Grieg [was] saying we have five layers… My thirst for knowledge took me to tears. I started to cry… It was such a beautiful moment… my heart melted completely. And then Grieg spoke about reincarnation. He said, ‘This is not our first life. We have lived before… and our main purpose in this life is to figure out who we are, where are we coming from, and where are we going after the so-called death. And what’s the point of this life? What’s our destiny?’ And it spoke to my heart. My boyfriend was holding my hand, ‘What’s up with you? Like, are you in pain? Are you hurt?’
(I’m not a crying person normally.) I told him, ‘It’s so beautiful what he is saying!’ And I would take notes. I still keep that notebook ever since, my notes from Grieg’s first lecture. And it was a very, very long lecture! And people wouldn’t let him go. There was a queue, and they all came up on the stage to ask him about healing and all kinds of stuff. And by now it was very crowded so I could not reach him from behind the screen… And my boyfriend was saying, ‘Okay, did you finish crying? Like, what’s up with you?’ And I said, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life!’ Then he said, ‘But you don’t even know what he looks like.’ And I said, ‘I don’t care how he looks. If he is teaching that, I will follow him.’ What can I say more? This is how I started yoga. ”

Some women described Grieg’s psychic powers: “I would meet Grieg occasionally at the library… Whenever I had something that I needed to be advised about, I could always write to him or even ask him somehow in my heart. And I could feel that an answer is on the way… he always answers, and is advising me the best.”
Several described Grieg’s psychic powers and gift of healing: “I was very slim when I started university, very stressed. There was a lot of work, many seminars, and Bucharest was very big, not like Pitești. I met Grieg in a group context with many people around us, and he turned to me, ‘Please, you have to eat, you are too devitalized, you are very slim.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I know, but I don’t have time, I am so busy, I have to go everywhere.’ And he said kindly: ‘Yes, but it’s very important for you to put some weight on. Please take a sandwich with you, take care of yourself and make sure you eat.’ I said, ‘But I am so busy, it’s so complicated for me, I don’t have time for this.’ And then he looked at me with so much compassion and he asked, ‘But to suffer, do you have time for that? Do you have time to suffer?’ And it was very powerful for me. I understood that he was right, and I put more effort into gaining weight. “
C. told a story about how she had been healed at a distance through a photograph: “I had a terrible pain in my leg and was planning to have surgery. My lover spoke to Grieg on my behalf. Grieg asked for my photograph and put it in his pocket and walked away. That was all. Miraculously, the next day I didn’t have any pain, it disappeared forever.”
B. was assigned a yoga posture by Grieg to cure her back pains: “My radiography, my X-ray, showed that almost all my spinal column was damaged. So, when my turn came, I asked Grieg what to do because I had back pains. And he told me I should practice… the exercise for the elongation of the spine. It’s a warmup exercise; we bend forward, exhaling. We rise slowly, inhaling. He told me that if I would do this 35 times every day, I should fix my problem. This was after a few years where my spinal column was so bad that I couldn’t even move and I had very, very big pains. So, I took his advice and did this exercise every day. After three months, I noticed I didn’t have pain. I could bend in front and move normally. Since then, I never had problems with my spinal column.”
G. spoke of how Grieg’s paranormal powers enabled her to pass an exam: “I was studying to become a nurse. I just went to Grieg, ‘Please help me pass the exams.’ He said, ‘Yes, I will help you.’ I did not study at all for the exams, but it just so happened that I passed the exams in a very mysterious way. On the biochemistry exam I didn’t know any of the answers. I was just looking at the questions when the [invigilating] teacher who was sitting close to me suddenly decided to walk to the other part of the room. Then the person next to me whispered, ‘What questions do you have?’ He just took my paper, ‘But this is very easy. I will answer for you.’ I sat there looking stupid (‘What is this?’). Then, he gave my exam back, saying, ‘I answered for you.’ I was shocked and surprised. After that, the teacher came back, and I was thinking, ‘My God, what is this? It is like a miracle!’ Then suddenly I remembered how Grieg told me he would help me.”
P. summed up what she felt Bivolaru’s yoga program had contributed to her life: “I think that this whole yoga class, it is so complex, so well put together, it has touched every area of my life and transformed it in a magical and beautiful way. And I have learned how to live at a higher level of consciousness, of loving, of giving. It somehow took me out of my little selfish ego and made me a lot bigger.”
Source: bitterwinter.org
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