Into the Jungle: Yossi Ghinsberg’s Story of Survival and Purpose

In this episode of The Goodnet Effect: Echoes of Inspiration, we are honored to host Yossi Ghinsberg, the legendary adventurer, entrepreneur, and motivational speaker. Best known for his incredible story of survival in the Amazon rainforest — later adapted into the film Jungle starring Daniel Radcliffe — Ghinsberg shares his profound insights on resilience, the power of connection, and how we can find meaning in the face of adversity.

Join us as Ghinsberg recounts his life-changing experiences, from his harrowing journey in the jungle to his mission to inspire others to embrace their inner strength and live authentically. Whether you’re seeking motivation, a new perspective, or simply an awe-inspiring tale, this episode will leave you deeply moved and ready to take on your own life’s challenges.

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode

DB: In today’s episode of the Goodnet Effect, Echoes

of Inspiration, recorded here at the Arison Group’s Essence of Life Radio, we are thrilled to welcome Yossi Ghinsberg, adventurer, author, humanitarian, whose story of resilience and survival has captivated the world. Yossi, your incredible journey surviving three weeks alone in the Amazon jungle has really captivated audiences and readers.

You had a book before the movie. It was brought to life in a film called Jungle starring Daniel Radcliffe, which has been a very popular film. And beyond your survival story, we’d love to hear about your journey as a philosopher of life, a connector of people, and a firm believer in the power of unconventional thinking and transformative experiences. 

We’re so excited to hear about your unique perspective on resilience, growth and on the unexpected paths that life can take us on. 

Goodnet, I’ll tell you a little bit about it. Goodnet is an online good news magazine. It was founded by businesswoman and philanthropist Shari Arison, and our aim is to bring positivity and inspirational stories to our community and our readers. I know that our readers are interested in things that can help them grow and things that can help them develop their character. 

And I know that your story and the things that you’ve learned will resonate so deeply with them. So I’m going to put you on the spot a little bit. And I know that you’ve told your story in many different venues and forums, but for people in our audience who do not know your story, if you could just give us the elevator pitch. Not your life story; the story of what happened to you in the jungle. So let’s start with the story itself. 

YG: The story is an amazing story. I can say it because I didn’t write the story. I wrote what happened. It was a big difference. I didn’t make up this story. If I could, I would have made up many stories like that and be a serial author of many bestsellers. But no. I have one book about my adventure and it’s a true story. It’s a harrowing story, but it starts with naivete. 

I was a young adolescent that read a lot of books, was bored at school but I was fascinated by the world of books and obsessed every day. I think I went to the public library every single day to exchange a book and I read everything that I could put my hands on. And through the years I read many adventure and exploration books and I had this effect of the books on me that every time I read a book, I felt I’m actually drawn into the world of the book. I became one more character. I could imagine myself; I had a very vivid and very powerful imagination that would allow me to actually cast myself to different places, and really experience through this just hallucination. So a book would inspire this hallucination. And all this was like a very powerful experience. And I started getting the notion that it’s not enough for me to just read about heroes in books, that I actually want to be a hero worthy of a book myself. 

And so I started preparing myself for the times that I’ll be able to be a great explorer myself. And I trained in the desert and I had all kinds of crazy ideas. I was very young. I’m talking about 14, 15, this age. 

When I was drafted to the army, I was still obsessed. But the obsession took a different form because I’ve decided by then what would be my first adventure. And this decision came mainly by two books that I’ve read. One is called the Journals of Fossett, he was an English cartographer and colonel that was fascinated with El Dorado in the lost city of the Inca. And the other book was Papillon, an amazing story about a prisoner in Devil’s island and about the human spirit that no matter what, doesn’t break. But there’s an exotic part to it. When he finally escapes, Devil’s island is actually washed to the shores of Venezuela. And he runs into the jungles and he’s taken in by a tribe. And this tribe adopts him and he becomes part of the tribe. And I was fascinated. 

And I decided that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go to this. My first exploration will be the Amazon. And I’m going to do what Papillon did, what Henri Charrière did. I’m going to find the tribe in the Uncharted, and I’m going to actually be adopted by this tribe and I’ll be one of them, be trained by them, I’ll live with them, and then I’ll fall in love, and I’ll get married into the tribe. 

DB: I’m only smiling and laughing because I know the story. Our readers don’t know what’s going to happen. 

YG: So I was very naive. And what you have to know is that my drive for adventure was always romance. So I’m not like an achiever, adventurer. Like I don’t want to be. I don’t have to cross a certain, like the desert that nobody crossed or climbed a mountain and conquered a mountain. For me, it’s the romance of adventure. So a tribe of indigenous people, the rituals, living with them and , the idea of finding maybe a treasure, all this romance that is associated with an adventure, that’s what attracted and still attracts me. 

DB: So how did it happen? How did you find yourself there? 

YG: Well, the first opportunity I had, which basically, after three years of military service, I took off to the world. And, you know, I have a lot to say and a lot of my teachings come from understanding the journey of a dreamer, which is also the journey of a hero in a way, the hero’s journey. I have my own insights about what it means to follow a dream. And for example, I’ll give. I’ll throw one in now, and actually, it’s a very good tip for anybody that wants to achieve a dream. And everybody has a dream. Everybody has a dream. But some dreamers, they don’t want to follow the dream. They just want to dream. They want to stay in the comfort zone. And that’s called escapism. A lot of people dream as escapism. Some people dream as a blueprint of the future. That’s the dream. Now I know what I’m going to do. You have to dream the future forward. Otherwise the future doesn’t occur unless somebody dreams it. Nothing happens unless somebody dreams it first.

DB: So I have a quote from you. “But here I have identified myself as a dreamer, a dreamer, fool, just like the knight in the legend. If you are just a dreamer without being a fool, you will never leave home and risk losing everything. Your assets, your ideals, your image. And what if it is all in vain and there is nothing to find? Only the fool can take such a risk. I was that fool. And for the dream was bigger than everything I risked. I lost. I have lost it all. Time and again. And through those experiences, I have found what I truly own. For all that can be taken from me is not mine to begin with. I have found home now. And there is no longer a need to search.” That’s extremely beautiful. 

YG: And I want to add an insight. The insight that I have is, like the notion, many dreamers have a notion that because they are bright eyed dreamers and they’re passionate and they’re driven and they go after the dream, then there’s an expectation. The expectation is that notion that if you follow your dream, the entire universe is going to conspire in assisting you to fulfill your dream. 

DB: All right, take me back to the jungle, Yossi. My people that are listening right now, maybe they didn’t see the movie, maybe they didn’t read your book. How did you get to the jungle and what happened to you when you got there? 

YG: Yeah, finally I traveled, I worked on my way and I made it to South America. I searched for my tribe.  I searched for my uncharted. Uncharted is a literary expression. It’s very hard to find uncharted. Well, they’re not charted. So finally, finally, finally, after a year on the road in South America, going all the way from the north down the continent, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, it was finally in Bolivia where my adventure began. 

And on the road I met one guy, then another guy, as you do. I traveled alone. But you know, you make friends on the road. So there’s this Swiss guy that we met on the border of Peru and Bolivia was a really beautiful man, Marcus, a Swiss school teacher on a sabbatical. And then I met Carl in the street. He introduced himself as an Austrian geologist and he told me about the Madidi, which is that uncharted part of the Bolivian Amazon. It wasn’t explored. And he told me about this tribe in the Madidi and the gold in the river.  All of, everything that I dreamt of this man presented to me. Yeah. And then I met Kevin. Kevin was this, like the most famous at the time , amongst the travelers. He was well known because it was like this American giant nature man and a photographer. And so I met all these characters and somehow we formed that foursome where Carl lured us to follow him into the jungle, each for different reasons. 

I wanted my childhood dream, but I was actually searching for myself. I wanted my rite of passage. Kevin wanted an image that will bring him into the National Geographic. But in fact he didn’t want to go home. Because he didn’t feel home only on the road, he felt at home. And Marcus, I don’t know what he wanted. He was heartbroken. Maybe he looked for some solace for his tortured soul. 

Anyway, the four of us ventured into the great Amazon. We flew as far as we could fly. When we started walking, after four days of walking, we came to the last little settlement and then the Uncharted. And so since it’s an elevator pitch. The first three weeks in the Uncharted, we were the four of us, and it didn’t go as planned. And it took much more time to get to the area where Carl was supposed to introduce us to this tribe. We never made it. In the interim, physically,  the confrontation was the rainforest on the verge of a rainy season, and there’s pressure on the group internally. You know, like  just to be in that pressure cooker of a living Amazon.

Tremendous knowing that you left civilization behind. Some notion of wilderness is awakened in you. And so all this was new, and Marcus didn’t adapt. Kevin and Carl were kind of sussing each other because Kevin was like this giant strongman while Carl was the leader. So there was tension between them. And after three weeks, we couldn’t continue anymore because Marcus was too weak. We ran out of supplies, and we decided to make our way back. And we’re disillusioned and the dream was over. Okay, so we’ll just walk back. 

On the way back, we crossed the big river, and that gave Kevin the idea, why walk now for three weeks back? Let’s take the river and evacuate through the water. And he was excited and kind of rekindled the spirit of the of the group. And we built the raft, and now we’re shooting the river down. Yes, it was much more dangerous, and we couldn’t control the raft at that stage. Carl and Kevin had the big explosion. Kevin was a raftsman. Carl couldn’t even swim. So basically, Kevin took over the leadership. Carl was so hurt that he basically quit and said, you want to survive, you leave the raft and we go back into the forest. Kevin refused to go back with him, and it split the group. Marcus went with Carl. 

DB: And you continued with Kevin.

YG: With Kevin, correct. We didn’t know what happened with them because they just left upstream and disappeared into the jungle. Kevin and I stayed with the raft. Three hours later, we were sucked into a canyon. We had a huge crash with a huge black rock in the canyon. The raft exploded on the rock, and we lost each other in the stream. Wow. Twenty minutes later, the river spat me out unhurt, which was absolutely a miracle. And after that, I found myself on the bank. Initially, I was sure Kevin would reconnect with me, but I didn’t know if he’s even alive. But I was just aspiring.

After four days, I knew I’m alone. It dawned on me that I’m alone now. It was the rainy season and I had basically nothing.

 DB: And that was really one of my questions. What went through your mind when you had that first realization that you’re really by yourself? What happened to you? 

YG: Emotionally? I broke down. This was like the dark night of my soul. After four days with hope. Hope is very dangerous. I had this hope that Kevin will show up, but he didn’t. So I realized that’s it. Kevin will not come. I’m alone in these circumstances. And I knew that I can’t. I can’t deal with all that.  I don’t have what it takes. 

DB: Why didn’t you just give up? Why didn’t you just. 

YG: You know, that’s actually what saved me. It wasn’t simple to give up. What do you do? Jump off a cliff, throw yourself in the river, basically commit suicide. And it’s so, it’s against nature, you know, even in… No matter how, you know, destroyed, shattered, broken, crushed; still, to throw myself off the cliff wasn’t even a consideration. So I cried and I felt really sorry for myself. And I was like, I felt like a terrible victim of very cruel circumstances. But still, I was alive. 

Not in good condition. I was hurt. I had no food with me, but I was alive. So on the fifth day, I decided I had no choice. I cannot just stay on the cliff and cry. I got up on my feet and I started walking downriver. And then my awakening began, you know, when I finally took responsibility and I said, I’m just walking downriver. That’s the only thing that I can do. There’s nothing else I could do but just keep the river as my only guide. Wow. And I started walking, and I spent three weeks in the jungle alone. 

DB: So I think the word that comes to mind from such an experience is resilience. And I know there’s so many people in the world today who are facing so many challenges and things that seem impossible for them. In the same sense as I can’t get up and I can’t walk and I can’t do this by myself; translate that to their regular lives. I cannot get up in the morning, I’m too depressed, I have too much anxiety. There’s so much of that in the world. And one of the most important qualities that a person can develop is resilience. What’s your advice to our Goodnet community on how they can try to grow that for themselves? Where does that come from? 

YG: It’s, it’s a good question and because it doesn’t have a straightforward answer and I’ll explain to you my take on that. You have to discern, like the hardest the circumstances are, the easier it gets to be resilient. Yeah, because there’s no other choice. Survival is a natural faculty. It’s a very strong survival mechanism. And what that survival mechanism does when it’s activated is deal with adversity. We are actually programmed to deal with adversity so we get into peak performance when we meet adversity.

That’s why I say to be a hero in extreme circumstances is much easier than to be a hero in a mundane environment. The day-to-day heroes are greater than the extreme heroes because the extremity by itself draws the heroism from you because it’s natural. 

DB: Okay, so how do we inspire our day-to-day heroes? Someone’s having a hard time in their life, they’re feeling overwhelmed. How do they find this or find their way?

YG: I’ll tell you my take on it, but first of all, I just want to just keep one more minute with that thread. So when the circumstances are really, really tough, it’s actually easy. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s easy because it’s a mechanism. The body exerts all the hormones and all the faculties, be it like the mental, the physical, the emotional and the spiritual, all the, all the faculties are energized and you are actually in a peak performance.

In that peak performance, in a strange way you also feel good because wellbeing is part of being able to deal with the circumstances. So you actually feel good. And that’s because of endorphins and dopamine and serotonin and noradrenaline. Your body gets all the drugs to enhance its performance. It’s not sustainable. It’s good for peak performance when you need it for a short burst of energy. When in peak circumstances, when life is in danger. 

DB: I think we’ve all had it. I mean myself as a mother, when your child needs to go to the emergency room, you function very, very well. And then afterwards you fall apart. We’ve all had it. But you’re right, it’s, it’s not sustainable on a regular day to day level. Yeah.

YG: Okay, so where is the problem day-to-day? The problem day-to-day is that being human we have a faculty that is called mind which can imagine things. So when you’re in nature, you perceive danger through the senses. So you’ll see danger or you’ll hear danger or you smell danger. Imagine an animal, an animal has very alert senses to feel if there’s any danger. If there is a danger, the animal is getting into a survival mode. Runs or fight as you know; fight or flight. 

But what happens when we are not in nature? We build ourselves cities, we feel protected. So the sense of danger is not perceived through the senses, it’s perceived only through the mind. So for us danger is day-to day-problems. You know, that’s what gives a signal of danger to the system. This, our system receiving that. False. Because it’s coming from the imagination, not from the senses or from your mindset or your reaction. The body doesn’t know how to discern because that parasympathetic, the survival mechanism is very primitive. So it gets the signal from the mind that there’s danger and activates the survival mechanism. So now we should be in peak performance because this is the best. 

When the survival mechanism is awakened, we are at our very best. However, we’re more defensive and anxious and fearful. Yeah, there’s nothing going on. Like there’s discrepancy because in the environment, the environment doesn’t present any danger. It’s just the mind presents danger. And that’s what’s so, so, so dangerous about dealing with our day-to-day problems. 

We’re dealing with them as if they were life endangering problems. And that’s how this is actually the precursor for all disease and for all break downs being skin or mind. We break down because of this pressure of day-to-day life, which is not real-life risks, but just the bank or the worries or the relationship or whatever it is. So we have to actually learn how to diffuse false alarms. Can you train your mind? Yes?

DB: So what are some of the ways that you can recommend to people to do that?

YG: Two major ways to do it, and this needs a bit. It’s very straightforward. So what I’m saying is, the problem is that the mind sends the signal of danger. The body believes the mind. We’re being activated. Now, this activation is stress. And stress, we know, causes all the other problems, right? So what we do, we cannot tell the mind. Stop sending the signal. We can’t, because the mind is not listening to us. Okay? So we cannot train the mind. That’s a very important thing to understand. Oh, I worry. So stop worrying. No, I can’t stop worrying. I can’t stop worrying. It’s not up to me. It worries me thin.

First of all, don’t fight it. Yes. That’s the first thing. Yes. Now, the smart thing to do, and it’s amazingly effective, is flood the system with sensual information. Okay,  so what you do, you just don’t pay attention to the mind? Let it keep showing the disasters and the worries and whatever the mind does, let it do its things. But balance, give more information to the body. Ok.  Aha. Breath. So just no sense of smell. 

When you smell, whether you understand it or not, it doesn’t matter. I smell no danger. Listen. I hear no danger. Look carefully now. When you look, do something besides looking. So if you take like a minute and go sense by sense and give like, let’s say, 20 seconds, 30 seconds to each sense, and you are fully there. But when you look, do one more thing, which is turn your head from side to side. So you’re not just looking, you’re scanning. So even that movement of the head, that primitive system understands what you’re doing. You don’t have to understand it, even just move your neck from side to side. 

Look, there’s a lot of information. I see no danger. I scan the horizons. There’s no danger. Hear no danger, smell no danger, taste no danger. My feet cannot feel any trembles. There’s no danger through the senses. That’s really interesting. So what you do, you flood the system. With information. Sensory, sensory information. So that’s one thing that is extremely effective and very simple. 

And it’s real information. It’s being in the present moment where we are right now in the studio. I see lights, I feel air conditioning. I see nothing. I’m touching a table. So that’s something that really anyone can do. Anyone can do it in any place. It’s very, very interesting. It’s better to stand for a minute. Even if you take your shoes off and then you feel the earth, there’s a whole. You look through the window and you move your head and let the mind do its thing. Don’t fight it. It’s futile, but you take the power off it by diluting with the sensory information you’re diluting the information. It’s really interesting, very effective, and very easy to do. 

So that’s the second thing. What you do with the breath is you, first of all, you breathe through your mouth, through your nose, but you exhale. Exhale. Through the mouth. And what you try to do is whisper. And that’s a trick actually, to slow the exhale. Ok. So you take a deep breath. We’ll do it together. Ok. We do it again. And now you clench your teeth. And then you just breathe. It’s  calming. There’s no way that there’s danger if you breathe like that. The system understands you cannot breathe like that and tell your survival mechanism that you’re in danger because it’s the opposite signal. When you’re in danger, you give a very clear indication that there’s no danger whatsoever by having a very long exhale. 

DB: Thank you so much, Yossi. Wow! Thank you for joining us today. Thank you again to the Arison Group’s Essence of Life Radio for hosting us. Thank you deep, deep in our hearts for sharing your wisdom and your insights with us.