ABSTRACT
Some data suggest that the use of digital technology after trauma can cause elevated cortisol levels, a condition that is harmful to various systems of the body and that can in turn create disharmony in the affected person’s perception of themselves, their lives, the world around them, and their interactions with others. This chapter explores the ways in which artist and reiki healer Damali Abrams employs social media to create healing spaces and share techniques for self-care to potentially shift the unconscious glow of wireless spectacle perfection into a momentary opportunity for restoration. Accordingly, Abrams seeks to transform the intimacies of healing arts traditionally aimed at affecting a beholder’s mind, spirit, and body into a general state of positive transformation through which healing is possible. As we move our fingers across the smooth glass of our smartphones, we leave smudges as traces of our corporeality: Skin, breath, moisture, external desires, and experiences. This chapter explores and nominates Damali Abrams’s process of clearing our screens as “Glittereiki.” Here, the term Glittereiki not only is a play on the term glitterati but also refers to Abrams’s moniker, the Glitter Priestess, and her profuse incorporation of the material in her art and life.
