Caldecott was born in
New Westminster, British Columbia, and graduated from
University Hill Secondary School in Vancouver in 1987. That same year, he won best actor in a Vancouver Theatre Festival for his performance in a play by Sheldon Rosen called
The Box. Shortly thereafter Caldecott, also known as Todd Shaffer, obtained an agent, and began working in the film and television industry, guest-starring in several television shows including
Wiseguy,
21 Jump Street,
Danger Bay,
Northwood and
Bordertown. He also acted in a number of made-for-TV movies including
Mother May I Sleep With Danger and
One Boy, One Wolf, One Summer, and the feature films
Fear and
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. After becoming disillusioned with the film industry, Caldecott traveled to
India and
West Asia in 1990 for a year-long trip on a budget of only a "few dollars a day". During this year he studied Indian classical music in
Chennai and
Varanasi,
India; and
buddhist meditation in
Bodhgaya, India; and Nilambe,
Sri Lanka. During his travel and study he became very ill, at one point suffering from both bacillary and amoebic
dysentery. After leaving India he traveled in a weakened state to the Northern Area of
Pakistan, including
Gilgit, the
Hunza valley and Pasu. It was in these areas, renowned for their long-lived inhabitants, healthy food and glacial water that he "partially recovered" from his illness. He then went on to travel throughout
Iran, spending several weeks as the guest of a
Sufi master in
Shiraz. Returning to Canada, Caldecott sought relief from what now had become a chronic digestive disorder, and found success in the treatments of an Ayurvedic physician. This would prove to have an enormous influence on his life path, and shortly thereafter Caldecott enrolled and graduated from a three-year, full-time clinical program in Western Herbal Medicine at the Coastal Mountain College in Vancouver. After graduating, Caldecott immediately traveled back to India to study
Ayurvedic medicine in
Coimbatore, India, over a five-month period, and then returned to Canada to begin practicing, writing and teaching. In 1999, Caldecott relocated to
Calgary,
Alberta, where he eventually became clinical director of the Wild Rose College of Natural Healing. Here Caldecott developed, administered and taught a three-year clinical program in Western Herbal Medicine. During this time Caldecott completed the manuscript for a textbook called
Ayurveda: The Divine Science of Life (), which was subsequently published by
Elsevier in 2006. Caldecott is co-editor of
Ayurveda in Nepal: The Teachings of Vaidya Mana Bajra Bajracharya (), along with Madhu Bajra Bajracharya and Alan Tillotson. Published in 2009, this book summarizes the clinical practice of Ayurveda according to the late Vaidya Mana's hereditary tradition of Ayurvedic physicians and Buddhist priests in the Kathmandu Valley. Todd Caldecott is also author of
Food As Medicine: The Theory and Practice of Food (2011), which describes the preventative and therapeutic application of food and dietary therapy, drawing upon the traditions of Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, and other traditional systems of healing. In 2012, Todd Caldecott founded the Dogwood School of Botanical Medicine, which offers distance learning programs and a
gurukula-style, mentorship training program for aspiring practitioners. Todd Caldecott also maintains an extensive website containing free content on natural health and wellness including a blog where he regularly posts. ==References==