The Autistic Yogi Reflects on the Dunning-Kruger Effect in Yoga and Movement Cultures

The Dunning-Kruger effect in psychology is a bias where people with low skill/ability have the illusion that their skill/ability is superior. Personally, I think it does compel many people to become teachers of their movement culture because of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, hopefully, in so doing they realize how much they do not know and see that their knowledge most likely was not superior in the first place.

I think that this bias leads to a ton of injuries and misconceptions.  When a student comes in and at some point in their past they explored a particular flexibility or strength, but then they went for years without training these aspects, assume they should be at their previous peak, which can then lead the person to far outdo the movements that are being cued through. It tends to be easy to discern after a conversation with an individual to see whether they are working within this bias or in fact have the knowledge to keep themselves within the appropriate physiological restraint.

When it comes to human movement and cyclic loading events (activities repeated daily, be it sleep, walking, sitting, standing, running, etc) its wise for an individual to make some goals to reach for and to problem solve the safest, best way for them to achieve that goal without skipping steps. The Dunning-Kruger effect can compel a person or a trainer to take a person, well beyond the steps they should be paying attention to, creating a recipe for severe harm.

When it comes to human pathology and the Dunning-Kruger effect we see people in the position of instructors throughout the modalities of movement culture, being some of the first in line to hear about an issue in the body from a student. If the instructor centrates with the Dunning-Kruger effect they are likely to make a blanket diagnosis on the basis of their own experience with pain, and we sayings like "oh I know exactly what is going on, I had the same thing....." or "you need to do this, and take that" but there is no attempt at understanding diagnostics on this instructors part.

I am a firm believer of problem-solving at the level the instructor-student relationship. That is to ask pertinent questions 1. How long have you felt this? 2. Have you felt this before? 3. Is there a history of cancer? 4. Did a specific activity lead to the sensation/feeling? 5. What descriptor words would you describe the feeling? 6. Is the feeling superficial or deep? 7. Have you sought information from a healthcare practitioner with the appropriate knowledge and license to diagnose?
So many more questions could be asked that are applying diagnostics without diagnosing. Once information has been gathered, then ask the individual to take that knowledge to their Doctor, Chiropractor, etc.

In this day and age, we are more likely to fall prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect because of the sheer amount of information that exists and because of the way that entertainment is conducted. We hardly ever at all see the nitty-gritty details of the training and injury history of a person who is executing movements that we desire to mimic. If we ourselves have not done our due diligence to condition and train the body to execute the movements we desire, we open ourselves up to injuries that could have been avoided.