The Zen Actuary Installment 21: Coming to Terms with Pain
By Rich Lauria
The Stepping Stone, March 2024
Author’s note: This is the continuation of a series[1] adapted from the book Awake at Work by Michael Carroll, covering the application of Buddhist teachings to situations encountered in a modern corporate workplace setting. This series addresses challenges frequently encountered by practicing actuaries.
An Unpleasant Birthday Surprise
In early August 2022, I received several birthday gifts from my wife, all in support of my flourishing at-home yoga practice. One of them was a new yoga mat from a different manufacturer than the one I typically purchase from. The manufacturer claimed that this mat was sweatproof and slip resistant. I could hardly wait to give it a test drive. Given the excitement and energy coursing through my veins, I decided to do a vigorous vinyasa centered on bakasana (e.g., crow pose), one of my favorite arm balances.
I also decided to throw in some donkey kicks from a shortened downward facing dog to get used to being on my hands. My plan had been to include three or four to add some cardio to the routine.
It was hot and muggy, and I decided not to turn on the air conditioning unit since it was early morning and there was a light breeze through the open window I wanted to enjoy during the practice. I was about 15 minutes into the routine and had worked up a good sweat. When I kicked up, I was so light that I achieved hang-time for the briefest of moments.
However, my insufficient upper body and core strength, combined with a moment of panic as I felt myself lose control, caused a tilt towards my right upper arm and hand, placing undue weight on them. The hand slipped and I adjusted by placing even more weight on the middle, ring, and pinky fingers. I crashed and landed intact except that I felt searing pain in my right ring finger, which had completely dislocated at the middle joint. Somehow, I had the wherewithal to undo the dislocation (this hurt like heck as well) before taking my wife’s sage advice and heading to urgent care to have it examined.
X-rays revealed that nothing was broken. I was referred to a hand specialist who provided a deceptively simple ring-like device to encourage mobility in the joint. Six weeks later I was declared healed with the caveat that the joint would continue its healing journey for up to another fifteen months. I was also informed that the finger would never be the same as it was pre-injury.
Lessons Learned
What Zen-like insights did I gain from this painful episode? Believe it or not, quite a few. While I would prefer to achieve them by staring at my navel peacefully for several days, I’m not sure they would have been realized with such conviction.
1. Pain offers an opportunity to live in the present moment. The day I dislocated my finger remains vivid in my mind. I was forced to deal with a crisis rather than allow my discursive mind to ignore it, which it desperately wanted to do. Like all living beings, I tend to run towards pleasure and away from pain. This is not “incorrect” behavior, but the mind’s way of finding comfort during discomforting times. In this case, I’m glad I chose to work through it to get the injury properly treated. I believe numbing myself for relief immediately could have led to delays in treatment and possibly a worse outcome.
2. Pain often requires a change in how we do things, and these changes can be valuable beyond facilitating the healing of an injury. I am right hand dominant, and it was taken out of commission for weeks. Many living habits had to change. I had to hold and make use of all eating utensils with my left hand. Showering and bathing required lathering and rinsing with the left hand. Opening and closing doors were particularly difficult at first. This required not only adjusting which hand operated the doors, but also the footwork to execute the task. Holding and turning the steering wheel of my car with only my left hand was scary at first. Thank God for power steering.
But an interesting thing happened along the way. As time passed by and I practiced more, I gradually became more capable of doing things with the left side of my body. Things still took longer to achieve, but this invited patience with myself, something I’ve always struggled with. I found compassion for what I was trying to do and became less harsh and judgmental of slip-ups and re-dos. In turn I found myself more patient with students, faculty, family, and friends, realizing that everyone is doing the best they can in the moment and that one’s best effort will not always be high quality. What a gift to better connect with others!
3. Pain from injury is a reminder of why the excitement and enthusiasm that makes many human endeavors so joyful must be balanced with caution and enthusiasm. In my yoga teaching, I counsel students to risk manage the practice and only go to one’s edge. This means allowing for some discomfort and unease, but not pain. Maintaining this discernment is critical to a lasting asana practice, and no teacher can tell a student whether they are in pain or just uncomfortable from attempting a pose.
Therefore, the student must ultimately determine how to best express the pose. The teacher serves as a guide and coach, inviting the student to explore different expressions of the pose if the body allows. The student has to make the final call, and is encouraged to avoid capitulating to either one’s comfort zone and missing the opportunity to deepen the pose, or to one’s ego and straining into a pose that he is not ready to do in the moment and possibly risking injury.
4. Pain requires that we slow down, acknowledge, and work within our physical limitations. There is no perfect pose and no perfect asana practice. Each of us is perfect just as we are in each moment that we breathe. Not being able to do certain poses for whatever reason—injury, fatigue, boredom, or distraction are common examples—is perfectly OK. Yoga poses are a vehicle to something much greater than the poses themselves. The practice helps prepare the mind and body for meditation, which in turn helps the practitioner reconnect with one’s higher self. Whatever pose the practitioner is working on, if it is done with mindfulness, then yoga is being practiced.
Oftentimes I find myself attached to certain poses or doing them in a certain sequence. At the time of my finger dislocation, I was over-emphasizing poses connected to the upper body and not doing enough lower body postures. The finger injury forced me to emphasize the lower body, and that got a lot stronger over my recovery period. I was unaware of imbalances that had formed. I now include two leg days each week with lots of standing postures and dynamic movements using various lower body muscle groups.
Application to Actuarial Practice
Physical pain caused by yoga asana practice will not often arise in actuarial work. The most common types of physical pain I’ve experienced on the job were paper cuts, headaches from staring too long at my computer screen, and stiff joints from sitting too long. While these have generally not registered the same intensity as my yoga injuries, I have learned lessons from their occurrence.
Most paper cuts have been caused by mindlessly grabbing the edge of loose papers or ripping open a well-sealed envelope. They always hurt more than they look like they should. The pain is a stark reminder of the consequences of doing things in a rush, which is my habit du jour despite all my mindfulness training.
I find myself staring too long at a computer screen when I’m struggling to understand something in a model that I’m analyzing. In my current role as Enterprise Risk Management faculty, this sometimes occurs when I am reviewing the modeling efforts of assignment submissions. For many students, this is their maiden attempt to build risk models. They are putting their best foot forward to apply the principles covered in the classroom. I want to provide students with clear feedback to improve future efforts.
My own perfectionistic streak gets in the way during these reviews, resulting in excessive screen time that ends with my reaching for Tylenol. This perfectionism is an old, ingrained habit that goes back to my days as a risk executive reviewing the model code and results developed by my team. It stems from the fear that the work may not be good enough and there will be a loss of credibility and trust from others relying on the work. Doing more is not always the solution. Sometimes it is about trusting myself and others and accepting the reality that errors occur, and I will sometimes miss them. The model is always “wrong” since it is only a picture of reality. I frequently lose sight of that fact.
Sitting has become the new smoking in this century. The tendency, especially as we get older, is to find a comfortable seat to relax in. Inertia then sets in, and we do not want to move. This is especially true if we are working on something important, like a “Zen Actuary” article, or watching something of interest on our television or computer monitor, like a compelling football game.
However, the body was meant to move, and long periods of sitting in the same place are not healthy for our bodies or minds. When I teach, I make sure to move around during class so that I do not stiffen up. When I work from home, I take quick yoga breaks such as holding downward facing dog or doing a handful of sun salutations to get the blood flowing and get out of my head for a few minutes. Nevertheless, hours can go by without my moving a muscle. I remain slumped in a chair, and my lower back and hips pay the price. I know better, but inertia is a powerful force, both physically and mentally.
Pain is not relegated to just the body. There is also mental pain and anguish. In the context of actuarial practice, this is likely to be more frequent and potentially severe than bodily pain. The responsibility of managing large financial security programs designed to provide cost-effective protection for many while delivering an adequate return to the providers of capital can be highly stressful and anxiety-inducing.
Actuaries are continually updating their models on the fly in an ever-changing world with unknown unknowns. Experience may be worse than assumed and the explanations are sometimes unclear or not easily translatable into definitive actions. In addition, the potential for a rating downgrade or an adverse regulatory finding can create organizational turmoil. Corporate development activities and department restructuring can place unexpected demands on actuarial resources, creating a chain reaction of angst throughout the team. Individual careers receive emotional setbacks such as unplanned transfers, demotions, and unfulfilled hopes for a promotion.
One of the greatest sources of mental pain I’ve dealt with was separation from valued actuarial colleagues. Successful actuarial functions require both individual and team contributions. Nothing I have achieved professionally could have been done without the insights and brilliance of others. Losing that connection can be jarring to team members, especially when those lost have been highly impactful.
One such loss was especially painful for me. A high-performing junior actuary working in one of the business units joined our Corporate Actuarial team. She streamlined and simplified the code in the existing enterprise risk management model and added capital management capabilities for assessing liquidity needs. When she announced that she was going back to graduate school, I was devastated. It took some time for me to shake off the loss. She had made life much easier for the whole team, especially me. Healing in this case meant accepting this loss, which translated to rolling up my sleeves and doing some extra work for the time being. It also meant moving forward in recruiting her replacement. Loss is a reminder of the impermanence of all things. One can feel the pain of loss while cultivating an open mind to the possibilities offered by all change.
Tonglen Practice
Advising one to accept pain or endure the loss of a valued colleague can often ring hollow. All loss requires a grieving process that involves various stages to be experienced before acceptance is reached. This cannot and should not be rushed. Feeling anger and a sense of “why me” is a valid and often necessary part of the process. What is not desirable is for one to remain stuck in that thinking for an extended period such that opportunities to move forward are missed.
At the root of feeling sorry for oneself is the sense of self-grasping and delusional belief that the world revolves around you and that you are the only one who suffers. This is a great challenge to genuine happiness due to each of us being isolated in his or her human vessel. Buddhism offers a technique for breaking down the walls of self-absorption called tonglen. This involves breathing in the suffering of others who are going through what we are going through in the moment, whether it is physical injury from breaking a bone or the anxiety of losing a job. We then breathe out compassion for others enduring similar pain, desiring that their suffering be alleviated.
The purpose of the practice is to turn one’s self-absorbed thinking on its head, through the realization that one is not alone in suffering. More importantly, the practice generates compassion from the practitioner for all who are suffering. You realize that the path to reducing your own suffering is through helping others, not fixating on your problems.
Final Thoughts
Pain—whether physical, mental or emotional—is an unavoidable part of the human experience. Much non-physical pain is driven by anxiety fueled by the actuary’s limitations on controlling the drivers of career success and the grief and sorrow from various losses. The most significant losses are talented colleagues, driven by the ever-changing dynamic of the companies and industries being served by the profession.
While engaging in masochistic behavior is not condoned, the occurrence of painful events offers the opportunity to be curious about the nature of pain and perhaps to see things differently than how we usually do. Rather than default to our usual patterns of running from pain or numbing it up, Buddhist philosophy invites practitioners to contemplate pain to better understand its drivers and use the experience to strengthen parts of the body, mind and spirit that will enhance overall wellbeing.
We learn that pain frequently occurs due to weaknesses and imbalances. A chronic imbalance for many is the overemphasis on self. Through the ancient practice of tonglen, practitioners use the breath to contemplate others’ suffering as a vehicle to connecting with all life and easing one’s personal suffering.
Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the editors, or the respective authors’ employers.
Rich Lauria, FSA, CFA, is associate director and lecturer in the Enterprise Risk Management program at Columbia University in New York City. He can be reached at rl2764@columbia.edu. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-lauria-6555a425/.
Endnotes
[1] The first 20 installments in the Zen Actuary series were published in the November 2013 through September 2022 issues of The Stepping Stone, available online at www.SOA.org/ld.