Daith Piercing: De-mystified

What is a Daith piercing?
During our Earmaggedon entry we touched on one of the judges, Erik Dakota, and his contribution to the burgeoning piercing scene in the early 1990’s. One of his collaborations with a client led to the daith piercing. This piercing is located on the flap of tissue that continues downward from the forward helix between the rook and and tragus placements. It is said to have a phoenetical root in the hebrew word “da’at” and stands for “knowledge”. Like many other piercings it sounds nothing like it is spelled (labret & guiche are good examples) and rhymes with the word moth.

Originally this piercing ideally appeared to exit the actual ear canal, but due to the differences in anatomy from person to person it describes any piercing in that piece of tissue. This piercing is traditionally done with a circular piece of jewelry, in fact it is one of the very few that we perform with this style of jewelry.

The idea behind not piercing with rings is that they rotate easier through the piercing. This can lead to outside contaminates  being pulled into the piercing channel increasing the chance for irritation or infection. Rotation can cause slight trauma to the piercing which can lead to unneeded scarring, rings are also much larger than equivalent straight jewelry making them more prone to be caught & snagged. Finally because they put a lot of pressure on an otherwise straight piercing due to their curvature. For this piercing, the placement nullifies much of those problems, allowing us to utilize rings as initially piercing jewelry.

Jared says “I generally use a large diameter ring to avoid the heavy curvature of a smaller diameter ring. Because of the shape of the ear the ring is protected by the cartilage surrounding it. The ear itself protects the piercing against most problems associated with rings in initial piercings i.e. snagging,  friction & rotation. Not only that, but it makes for a really striking appearance!”

This piercing is considered an advanced piercing and as such should not be attempted by any piercer without the proper training. In fact, Eric Dakota’s client named it daith because it certainly takes a piercer with a lot of knowledge to attempt it.
Read more about the Daith piercing here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daith_piercing

We’ve included some fun pictures of Daith piercings performed by our piercing staff, Bryan & Jared.  To schedule an appointment for this piercing, (or any other piercing) give us a shout at the studio: 865.951.1486

~ by Born This Way Body Arts on January 17, 2013.