 Alongside traditional piercing techniques , modern body adornment includes variant techniques such as pocketing and flesh stapling , although as of 2007 these were still not widely made available by piercers . In the first of these , a scalpel opens the skin or mucous membranes , into which the larger end of a piece of jewellery or — if using a bar — two ends are inserted . These kinds of piercings may be difficult to remove , as fibrous tissue can form around the end or ends of the jewellery or the implanted tube into which the jewellery is placed . When a bar is used , pocketing looks quite similar to flesh stapling . The latter technique is frequently done in the form of a ladder . Modern body piercing practices also include dermal anchoring or dermal piercing , which combines piercing and implantation to create a single point of opening in the body ( whereas pocketing creates two ) to permit one end of the jewellery to show above the surface of the skin . While this technique can be performed almost anywhere on the body , as of 2007 it was popularly done between the eyes , on the chest , or on the finger , to simulate a ring . 
