"Operation Christ" is the codename given by the Romanian authorities to a police and military operation initiated by them, against the MISA yoga spiritual movement and their mentor Gregorian Bivolaru. He began practicing yoga in 1969, studied oriental teachings of wisdom by Mircea Eliade, Ramakrishna, Shivananda and Yogananda, and was teaching practical yoga in Bucharest in 1978. During the Romanian communist regime Bivolaru was kept under observation by Securitate, the Department of State Security, because practicing and teaching yoga was prohibited in Romania at that time. After the collapse of the communist regime and the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu in Dec. 1989, Bivolaru immediately founded MISA in Bucharest.