// August 13th, 2010 // No Comments » // Featured

Needle play has been around for a fairly long time now, but it is only recently that it has become so popular among the
BDSM scene participants. I recently went to a small dungeon party which was in celebration of the Dungeon’s 3rd year of business; they have profession dominatrix sessions. I was very surprised to see that they had invited a piercer to the party who practiced needle play for free on some of the willing party guests.
What is needle play exactly? It’s a kind of recreational acupuncture involving placing needles through the top layer of skin, or using needles for temporary piercings for the purpose of enjoying the experience rather than producing a permanent body decoration.Needles are removed from the body when the session is complete, allowing the wounds to heal.
There are a number of reasons people engage in play piercing e.g. self-expression, as a part of a ritual imitating mock tribal cultures, for the purpose of spiritual self-discovery, for sexual pleasure, for simple entertainment, raising awareness or relieving boredom. Needle play is considered edge play – the practice which involves significant risk of injury or physical harm. For this reason it is very important to only practice needle play with someone who a significant amount of prior experience in this type of
play, as well as a profession piercing degree. The obvious factors to take into consideration
when thinking about taking part in this type of play would be to know fora fact that all needles being used are sterilized and fresh out of their packages and that the person doing the piercing is an expert in this (try not to go on word alone). Needle play that hurts a lot when it is not being done properly. It should feel like having an injection, for some people it can be a little worse than that. Play piercing’s impact comes from its psychological effect, not just any pain it causes. Get medical help if serious pain carries on after needles are removed.
PaddedKink.com‘s own Kelly Shibari recently decided to try out needle play for the first time and documented the whole session for her members. The pictures in this post are from her session with the piercer. It’s a really interesting movie because she, as well as the piercer explain in great detail what the piercings feel like, what the protocol is, as well as, how the piercings affect you psychologically. I would definitely recommend checking it out if you are interested int his type of play!