Lost yoga teacher Amanda Eller was \u2018bawling\u2019 when her rescuers arrived
The yoga teacher who spent 17 days lost and injured in a Hawaiin jungle has recalled the moment she started “bawling” as she knew she was finally getting saved.
Amanda Eller, 35, had a broken leg and was growing dangerously malnourished as she lived off wild fruits and even moths after getting lost during a jog in Maui on May 8.
“I was getting so skinny that I was really starting to doubt if I could survive,” she admitted to The New York Times.
“I wanted to give up. But the only option I had was life or death,” she told the Times, calling it a “spiritual journey.”
“I heard this voice that said, ‘If you want to live, keep going.’”
Eller, who had left her water bottle, cellphone and wallet in her car as she only planned a short jog, said she would sleep in the mud — and even spent a night in the den of a wild boar.
She now realizes her efforts to escape only landed her in more trouble, with her falling 20 feet off a steep cliff, fracturing her leg and tearing the meniscus in her knee and losing her shoes in a flash flood.
“The whole time I was going deeper into the jungle, even though I thought I was going back where I came from,” she said, revealing she started crawling because of her injuries.
She recalled how she was near a stream searching for “some plant to eat for dinner and some place to sleep that wasn’t directly in the mud” when she saw the helicopter that would save her.
“I looked up and they were right on top of me,” she told the Times. “I was like, ‘Oh my God,’ and I just broke down and started bawling.
“I am forever indebted and overwhelmed by the amount of people that came out to help me. It was pretty miraculous.”
After finally getting back to safety, Eller released a video of her in her hospital bed praising the rescue operation.
“The last 17 days of my life have been the toughest days of my life,” she said, fighting back tears as she sat beside her loved ones.
“It’s been a really significant spiritual journey that I was guided on. There were times of total fear and loss and wanting to give up, and it did come down to life or death and I had to choose.
“I chose life.”
She insisted it was a “tiny little blip of my story” that “serves a much, much bigger purpose.”
“Seeing the way the community of Maui came together — people that know me, people that don’t know me — all came together just under the idea of helping one person make it out of the woods alive … It just warms my heart,’ she said.
“Just seeing the power of prayer, the power of love. When everybody combines their efforts is incredible. It can move mountains.
“That’s what this was all for. This was all about us coming together for a greater purpose of community and love and appreciation for life.”
She insisted, “I have the most gratitude and respect and appreciation — I can’t even put it in words — for the people who have helped me, for the people who have prayed for me … for the people all over the world who wanted to be a part of this for the greater good.
“I appreciate it more than words can say.
“It’s such a beautiful exchange of energy among people for all the right reasons.”
