Breaking The Natural Hair Rules For Easier Hair Care

Can we break the rules sometimes? Like seriously!?

With natural hair, there are so many rules and regulations that it’s hard to keep up, and we feel terrible if we break one – almost like its the end of the world. However, many of us have the same busy lifestyle we had before natural hair and that won’t change any time soon.

Some of us women are going through life changes like pregnancy and lack the energy it takes to do the regular natural hair routine every wash-day, *raises hand*. Personally, the last thing I want to do as I carry around this big belly is to touch my hair.

Also, there are women with children or those who have super demanding work and school schedules, that just don’t have the time for a long drawn out regimen. It’s simply not possible to ‘make time’ if your life has changed.

So, does this mean that you are excused from caring for your hair and should neglect your hair and let it be a dry, brittle, tangled mess? Absolutely NOT! This simply means that you will be tweaking your hair care regimen a bit to work with your current lifestyle, while keeping your hair healthy.

We need to figure out ways to give our hair the simple things that it needs while maximizing the most benefit. To be totally honest, natural hair only takes forever to care for if you let it.

The goal is a healthy head of hair, so we have to prevent breakage and keep our hair clean and moisturized. The natural hair bible states that we should pre-poo then shampoo/co-wash then condition and deep condition and moisturize and protect and all that jazz, but what if we broke some of those rules? Here is how:

You can skip the pre-poo!

If you do not pre-poo your hair every wash day, you will not damage your hair, despite what you have been told. Sure, if you can find the time to pre-poo each wash day, then please do so, but don’t feel bad if you can’t.

Instead, try washing your hair with water first. Washing your hair with water is extremely important if you are skipping the pre-poo step.

1. Stand under the shower and let the warm water run through your hair until it’s completely saturated.

2. After which, you should start massaging your scalp to loosing up any oils* and gunk on your scalp.

3. Gently palm your hair to allow the warm water to remove some of the oil and debris and soften up the hair for the shampoo process.

Shampoo/Cleanse less!

Having a clean scalp and head of hair is very important; there is no getting around that. Now that your hair is fully saturated with water and a bit softer, go ahead and cleanse your hair with a product that is sulfate free.

1. Focus on your scalp – massaging the shampoo into your scalp to remove all oils* and dirt and flakes (if you have them).

2. Leave the shampoo on your scalp for two to three minutes to do its thing.

3. The length of your hair will be cleansed during the rinsing process. There is no need to add shampoo directly to the length of your hair.

Conditioning

Find a good moisturizing conditioner* that your hair loves. Apply conditioner to your hair shaft ONLY. Do not apply directly to your scalp, detangle your hair while it is saturated with conditioner, braid or twist then rinse.

So what about the deep conditioning*? Wash day without a deep condition session is FINE! Yup, I said it. If you wash your hair once every week or bi-weekly, you can deep condition your hair every two weeks or even monthly, instead of every wash day.

No, your hair won’t fall out, of course. If you can fit a deep conditioning session into each wash day, then great. Just make sure that your hair gets a good deep conditioning* session at least once a month.

No Wash and Go hair styles!

Wash and Go styles are cute and sometimes they are easy to accomplish and look effortless. However, if you do not wash your hair often, you could have massive product buildup from the gels used to accomplish these styles.

Your hair could also be very dry and need extra work and manipulation to achieve soft moisturized hair. Some of us really have no time for this and often the hair is left neglected. Protective long term styles that last all week are better for us girls who do not have time to constantly be in our hair.

Choose Protective Styles Carefully

Protective styles are a great way to keep our hands out of our tresses, and allow it to rest a little and even promote hair growth. However, we have to choose protective styles carefully and be watchful of how they are installed.

1. Try protective styles that require the least amount of manipulation like twists, flat twists or buns.

2. Make sure that your edges are not pulled too tight and your ends are tucked away.

3. Do not be tempted to keep these styles in too long. Protective styles like braids and weaves* normally can be kept up to 4 weeks with some maintenance. Try to avoid leaving it in for too long.

Comment below, and let us know how you have cut down your regimen to fit a busy lifestyle.