Play piercing

What is play piercing?

Play piercing (in Dutch naaldenspel) is a temporary piercing with sterile needles, set within a sexual or ritual scene and removed again afterward. The word piercing here refers to the puncture and not to a piece of jewelry. That one difference determines almost everything around it, from the hygiene to the law.

Why people get dizzy during a play piercing

Not from the pain, but from a reflex the body sets off itself.

What happens then is explained in the StatPearls chapter on the vasovagal reaction by Rebecca Jeanmonod, Deepank Sahni and Michael Silberman. Blood pressure and heart rate drop, so that too little blood reaches the brain and someone briefly loses consciousness. Pain and emotional upset are known triggers. One of the explanations they give is almost grim: the reaction may be an overshot adaptation that in injury is meant to limit blood loss by bringing pressure and heart rate down.

How often this happens the same chapter adds: in people under forty more than 85 percent of all fainting is vasovagal. So it is not the rare exception the scene takes it for.

Its onset is visible. The warning signals the chapter names are lightheadedness, warmth, nausea, tunnel vision, ringing in the ears and heavy sweating. Whoever is lying down at that moment usually comes round again by themselves and quickly, because the blood flows back out of the legs and the heart no longer has to pump upward.

How common fear of needles is

More often than people admit, and among women more often than among men.

Jennifer McLenon and Mary Rogers brought together, for Journal of Advanced Nursing, 119 studies, of which 35 had enough data for a meta-analysis. For young adults they estimate the prevalence of needle fear at 20 to 30 percent. The fear decreases with age, and both the fear and the phobia occurred more often among women than among men.

That figure changes how you look at a first time. In a group of five people there is, statistically, someone who cannot handle the needle, and that person often only knows it once the needle is there.

Why people do play piercing

For the combination of focus and visibility.

• For the one undergoing it, there is little room for thoughts. Something is coming, it is small and sharp, and you know exactly where. That makes play piercing one of the most concentrating things there are.
• For the one setting the needles, it is slow work with a visible result. The pace is theirs, and there is nothing to improvise.
• For both, there is an ending that other forms of play lack: the needles come out again, and afterward there is a body with nothing left in it.

Play piercing solves no tension that was already there. And anyone who does it for the photo afterward is in for a disappointment, because the image lasts twenty minutes and the little hole a day.

How people go about play piercing

Lying down, slowly, and with fewer needles than the pictures suggest.

A common first scene has two or three, somewhere on the forearm or the upper chest, with enough time between each needle to watch how someone is doing. Patterns across the back or along the upper arm are the advanced work, and that takes half an hour or longer.

What separates the careful approach from the careless one is not the technique but the attention to the person instead of to the pattern. Anyone watching their own work misses exactly the pale skin and the beads of sweat that announce what is about to happen.

What play piercing is not

“It is just getting a piercing.” No. With piercing a piece of jewelry stays in the puncture; with play piercing the needle comes out again and nothing stays in the skin. What that means legally, and why no one supervises the hygiene as a result, is worked out at needle play.

“Anyone who faints can’t take pain.” That link does not exist. The vasovagal reaction is a reflex of blood pressure and heart rate, and pain is only one of its triggers. People with a high pain threshold go down just as easily.

“If you feel no fear beforehand, it is not so bad.” Also not. In my experience the shock usually only comes at the moment the needle becomes visible, and McLenon and Rogers show how widespread needle fear is.

“Needles belong to blood play.” Usually not. A shallow puncture releases little blood; blood play only begins when the blood itself becomes the subject.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years into BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. With needles I watch the face more than the skin, and I learned that the hard way.

Someone who goes very quiet halfway through. Not because it is too much, but because the body is busy with something the head has not caught up to yet. At that moment I stop, put the legs up and wait. That costs two minutes and it saves an evening.

And the question I always ask before we start: have you ever had a jab where everything went black. Anyone who says yes to that gets no different needle, but a different position and a longer pause between the first two.

What you can do yourself

• Lie down before the first needle goes in, and stay lying down until ten minutes after the last one have passed.
• Say it right away if you get lightheaded, warm, nauseous or start to ring in the ears. Those are the warning signals, and at that moment a faint can still be prevented.
• Tense your leg muscles or cross your legs as soon as that feeling comes up, as Thuisarts advises.
• Eat and drink something before the scene. An empty stomach and too little fluid make the reflex easier.
• Start with two needles, not with a pattern. You only know how your body reacts after it has reacted.
• Agree who calls if someone does not come round within half a minute, and then actually call.

More reading on play piercing

Within this glossary, needle play covers the practice, the legal boundary and the research into what happens to people in such a scene, and blood play describes where the line lies once blood becomes the subject. On the blog, the article on needles and sensations is about how a first jab feels.

Beyond this site, the StatPearls chapter on the vasovagal reaction explains in a few paragraphs what happens during a faint, and the meta-analysis by McLenon and Rogers gives the best estimate of how many people are afraid of needles.

Where this fits on this site

Finding out whether needles are for you starts with a conversation, not with a needle. At the BDSM date you can read how that preparation goes and what gets gone through in advance.

Sources

• Vasovagal Episode. Rebecca Jeanmonod, Deepank Sahni & Michael Silberman, StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf (NBK470277), updated 17 July 2023. A clinical reference work for care providers and thus the natural source on this reflex. Gives that a vasovagal episode is the most common form of reflex syncope and arises because the regulation of blood pressure fails and blood flow to the brain drops, with a brief loss of consciousness as a result; that pain and emotional upset are known triggers; the explanation that the reaction may be an overshot adaptation that in injury limits blood loss by lowering blood pressure and heart rate; that in people younger than forty more than 85 percent of all fainting is vasovagal; the warning signs of lightheadedness, warmth, nausea, tunnel vision, ringing in the ears and heavy sweating; and the fact that lying down restores blood supply to the brain and that recognizing the warning signs often prevents an actual faint.
• The fear of needles: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Jennifer McLenon & Mary A. M. Rogers, Journal of Advanced Nursing 75(1), 30–42, 2019 (DOI 10.1111/jan.13818). Systematic review and meta-analysis across four databases with no restriction by age, sex, country or language, and the most cited estimate of how widespread needle fear is. The full text is behind a paywall; what was used is what the abstract states literally: 119 studies found, of which 35 had enough data for meta-analysis, an estimated prevalence of 20 to 30 percent among young adults, the decline of needle fear with rising age, and the fact that both needle fear and needle phobia occurred more often among women than among men.
• Flauwvallen. Thuisarts.nl, a partnership of the Dutch College of General Practitioners with the Federation of Medical Specialists and Patiëntenfederatie Nederland. The Dutch public information alongside the GP guidelines. Gives that fainting happens because there is briefly too little blood in the brain, that fear, pain, long standing, getting up quickly and urinating are triggers for it, and the advice, at an approaching faint, to cross the legs and tense the leg muscles, or to sit down with the head between the knees.

Related terms

Play piercing is the puncture; the neighbors around it name the same act in another language, or the line it runs up against.

• Needle play. The umbrella term, in Dutch naaldenspel, with the practice, the legal boundary against real piercing, and the research into altered states of consciousness.
• Injection needles. The hollow type of needle and the risk classification that goes with it.
• IV needles. The tools this is done with, with the gauges and the sterile working that come with them.
• Blood play. What this turns into once blood becomes the subject.
• Edgeplay. The category that play with needles falls under.
• Pain threshold. Why a high pain threshold says nothing about fainting.
• Aftercare. What has to happen after the last needle, and why you stay lying down then.