Clay-- Going the All Natural Route Without the Big Expense

Keisha writes:

Q.: I am a 9 month transitioner and loving the process. I will BC in 3 months on my one year anniversary.

I had a couple of questions dealing with natural hair clays and masks. I really want to go the all natural route without the big expense. I have been using amla and shikakai mixtures, henna and honey mixess, bentonite clay, ACV; honey and EVOO  mixes; shea butter, coconut oil, evoo, jojoba oil mixtures.


But I have been hearing about the rhassoul clays, zisyphus spina christi, and marshmallow root.  Where do you order these things from?  What are the uses of these products? Can I use them now on my transitioning hair or should I wait until completely naturally? What recipes do you use with these products? Do you know of any other clays?

A.: Many of the herbs and plants we use for our hair are also used for herbal detoxification, elimination and removal of toxins from the the liver and digestive system. These include burdock root, fenugreek, ginger root,  marshmallow root, as well as Bentonite clay (Monmorillonite).

I first used clay (Bentonite) as part of a  digestive detox.  Imagine downing 8 oz. of bentonite clay and water 3 times a day for 2 weeks! Luckily, for your hair to benefit from the "mud treatment" all you need is to slap it on your hair. 

Rhassoul clay (Hectorite) comes from Morocco and is 100% naturally occurring.  It is only for external use (unlike Bentonite) and is a very popular spa treatment.  I get mine from Mountain Rose Herbs. Their Rhassoul is untreated, quarry mined and sun dried from naturally occurring lake-side deposits.

Celebrating 3 years of Natural Hair - 10/21/06

October 21, 2006 was the day I got my third and last “little chop” -- 3 cuts I had gotten between then and August of 2005 when I stopped texlaxing. (My texlax had been a medium-strength sodium hydroxide relaxer kept on only as long as it took for the hairdresser to apply it). With the last of my texlaxed ends cut off, I walked out onto Church Street in Cambridge, MA with naturally curly hair for the first time in my adult life.

  December 2006 - A rainy day of shrinkage

This year I became aware the date was creeping up sometime in September. I began to mentally mark the days to my natural anniversary. It would pop up in my mind periodically. I thought about possibly celebrating it, at least with a "woohoo!". I looked forward to being 3 years a natural, one more year of knowledge and increased love for my hair.

 October 4. 2009 length check - wet and styled. I lose 2 inches when it dries.

I remembered the tough spots I faced in those 3 years: a bald spot on my temple, thinning hair from menopause and dropping hormone levels; having a major cut mid-2008 to get rid of some bad ends; and finally, the painful 16+ month transition from brown, color-treated hair to fully and naturally gray.

Hair Purgatory: Between the Big Chop and the "Hang"

A www.naturallycurly.com member started a topic about Hair Purgatory. For hypertextured 4a's, 4b's and beyond, that means when that pretty teeny weeny Afro (TWA) is no longer teeny enough to highlight your head shape, but not long enough to hang even partially south. It's still too short for that but it may be flopping out in other more crazy ways. It may naturally coil. But it also may have different textures. The sides may be tighter like coffee stirrer coils. The crown may have looser coils. The front may grow more slowly than the back. One part may be coarser than another. Or one part may be shrinkier than another.

This is the time when many curlies are focused on gaining length but are still learning what products and routines work best for their hair. It is when we aspire to all those shoulder length and beyond natural looks whose photo albums we so eagerly stalk. We get so focused on our hair future because that is way easier than our hair present. And of course these SL gals never had to go through this awkward period, they just woke up one morning and were SL, right? Let's call this Beyond the Big Chop (BC) Purgatory. It's a tough time because depending on what you do, you can inhibit your hair's development.

Beyond the BC hair purgatory happened to me several times over many years. It was a tough time for me -- too long for the cute shape anchored by my scalp. Too short for the hang. Doing the north, east and west, but definitely no south. WTF was it doing?

• not long enough to hang but not short enough to behave.
• not long enough to pull back into a bun.

I was in this stage several times in my life and each time it felt like I was unanchored and could not see the far shore. No matter how much I patted it down it refused to behave like a TWA. It also refused to behave like it wanted to drop and hang. I went through several cycles of growing it to a certain length, losing hope, and BC'ing again. And it all happened before the curly hair product revolution I saw happen after Y2K.