6×30 Doc Series                         Vision TV/Zoomer – 2013

With unique access to an Ayurvedic centre in Kerala, South India, Taking Back the Years follows patient Mr. Patel through the rigorous, 90 day long and 4000 year old, practice of Kaya Kalpa.  Meanwhile Canadian filmmaker Hilary Pryor – the same age as Mr. Patel – explores the latest discoveries in North American medicine and with advice from Western scientists and fitness experts, attempts her own 90 day regime towards rejuvenation.

This documentary series includes interviews with the top researchers and experts in the field of anti-ageing such as:

• Medical doctor and holistic health practitioner Deepak Chopra, best-selling author and co-founder of the Chopra Centre for Wellbeing.

• Cambridge’s Dr. Aubrey De Grey, co-founder of SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Foundation, who argues that ageing is a disease that can be cured. 
  

• Dr. Sethu Madhavan, with 3 decades of research in Ayurveda, who believes Kaya Kalpa can give his patients 30 years of additional life span.

• Sri Sri Ravishankar, mystic and founder of The Art of Living that has, among other things, funded an Ayurveda Hospital and Training Center.

• Dr. Elissa Epel, University of San Francisco, whose research indicates that meditation increases the production of telomerase.

The more Hilary finds out the more she is intrigued by the parallels between the scientific and holistic approaches.  Holistic practitioners seek to achieve a combination of physical and spiritual practices that embrace the whole person – this is often mirrored at a cellular level by Western research.  And although both cultures are inherently suspicious of each other, there is much to be learned from one another.

Do either Mr. Patel or the filmmaker “take back” any years through their efforts?  We will find out!