57. From Cancer to Self Healing: Lessons for Nonprofit Leaders Around Personal Wellness with Cimeran Kapur

It was a thrill to spend time recently with Cimeran Kapur, the Founder, and CEO of Potion, cancer survivor, advocate for healing, and – most of all – seeker of truth. In this episode of What the Fundraising, we’re discussing the effects of coming into alignment with ourselves. It starts with sifting through and looking at who we are to uncover who we’re meant to become.

Cimeran was living at breakneck speed, becoming a physician and doing her best to save the world, when she was hit out of left field with a cancer diagnosis. Her world, of course, was turned upside down. Rather than buckle under, Cimeran got busy researching, reflecting, and shedding layers of conditioning that had not served her well. Ultimately she was drawn back to her roots in Ayurvedic medicine, an ancient mind-body-spirit practice from India. Today she is launching Potion, a brand whose mission is to educate and bring integrative health and well-being to everyone.

You’ll learn not only about Cimeran’s journey to full remission but also about the toolkit she deployed in getting there. She’s also offering compelling insights into the nature of true self-confidence (and how to cultivate it) as well as how to set boundaries that are integral, authentic, and in community with others. Cimeran’s combination of personal life examples and Ayurvedic wisdom are inspiring and educational both professionally and personally.

To increase your fundraising confidence specifically, you might benefit from understanding your fundraising superpower by taking this Quiz. 

This episode is sponsored by our friends at Bloomerang. Our friends at Bloomerang really understand fundraisers, which is how they make a donor management software that nonprofits like to use. To learn more about them, head on over to bloomerang.com/mallory.

Episode Highlights:

(02:17) – Cimeran shares a bit about her background, history, and how she came to her mission.

(03:23) – About Cimeran’s (Western) medical training and early childhood experiences in India informed her life choices. 

(05:51) –A cancer diagnosis as a 28-year-old med student.

(06:20) – Cimeran’s journey to personal healing and self-confidence. 

(10:32) – “Savior complex” and how it plays out.

(13:48) – Are we trying to turn ourselves into robots? 

(16:35) –Systemic contradictions 

(18:12) – Confidence vs external validation 

(21:43) – The steps Cimeran took to clean up her act and claim true self-confidence:

(22:42) – What it is that draws Cimeran to Ayurvedic medicine and its components.

(23:49) – Cimeran’s framework for cultivating health and wellness.

(27:31) – About what it is to experience alignment and discomfort simultaneously.

(30:30) – Mallory and Cimeran examine integrity and the lies we tell that pull us out of integrity.

(33:26) – Can self-love wind up being selfish, toxic, or unkind? 

(35:12) – Mallory and Cimeran double-click on two aspects of boundaries.

(36:50) – Strategies for creating boundaries.

(39:09) – All about Potion