Thousands of yoghins gathered in the Romanian resort of Baile Herculane in South – Western Romania, for an International Yoga Symposium. Over 400 people created the first spiral of their annual meeting.

This was one of the eight spirals which will bring together men and women holding hands and meditating for 90 minutes. The spiral is created by alternating men and women and placing them close to each other depending on their zodiac sign.

The yoga symposium, organized by the MISA Yoga School, will take place until May 11, and 3,000 people from Romania and abroad are expected to arrive in Baile Herculane. This brought the occupancy rate for hotels and boarding houses in the resort to 100 percent, and many members of the MISA have friends among locals and stay with them.

The hotels and boarding houses in the resort have prepared for the kick – off event for their season: some opened earlier, and all of them will prepare vegetarian food. Locals stand to win too, as they get to see their produce to MISA members, according to Mediafax.

The MISA leader and founder, guru Gregorian Bivolaru, 62, also known as Magnus Aurolsson, who currently resides in Sweden, is expected to ‘telepathically connect’ to the participants in the symposiums in Romania.

Bivolaru, who started teaching yoga in the late 70s, was sentenced to prison on several occasions, including in the 70s and 80s during the Communist period, for having spread pornographic materials and for having performed black magic. He was also arrested in 1989 for spreading obscene pictures of him and his girlfriend.

Prosecutors however found him mentally challenged and had him sign up in a clinic. Bivolaru created the MISA immediately after the fall of Communism. In 2011, a Romanian court decided the MISA founder had been persecuted by the Romanian authorities on political grounds, but in 2013 another court sentenced him to prison for having sex with a minor. He currently has political asylum in Sweden, where he has been living since 2005.

editor@romania-insider.com