How to Have Naturally Beautiful Hair

Many people wash their hair everyday, and others once or twice a week. I am a once or twice a week girl, but then again I don't have really oily hair like my family does. My skin is dry skin, but I am alone in my family in this area considering that they all have oily skin. What do skin and hair have to do with each other? Well the type of skin you have is going to have a lot to do with how often you have to wash your hair, of course you have to add in other factors such as work, gardening, etc. But most of us (especially us women) take showers when our hair begins to get oily, and that is a good start to being natural.
God gives us a natural conditioner for our hair, our own oils. I know that most people think that oily hair is not a bit fun and most of us try to keep our hair from getting oily, by taking several showers during the week. Sometimes for those who have extra-oily hair and skin this is okay, but for those of us who have dry skin, this can be pretty detrimental to your hair and scalp.
Using your own oils is essential to trying to keep your hair routine as natural as possible. What I would like to do is show you how to do this with your own oils and other herbal hair products.

Using Your Own Oils
What you want to start out with is just let your hair go as much as possible, now I know that if you have worked and sweated all day you are going to want to take a shower. But, if all you have is bad BO then I suggest that you just put a shower cap on and just wash your body.

What Shampoo Should I Use?
When you start out with your shampoo I would suggest buying one that does not have a lot of sulfates in it or that has none at all, I suggest for oily hair using Dr. Bronner's Tea Tree Oil Soap and for less oily hair Dr. Bronner's Mild Baby Liquid* if you are going to use a sulfate soap, I would use Root Awakening by John Freida. This is still sulfate based but has several herbs that are good for the hair in it.

Shampooing Without Stripping Your Hair
Start out with a small amount of shampoo or soap (about the size of a nickel in the palm of your hand). What you want to do is rub your hands together to soaponify the soap, then start at the hair line (where most of your oil will have formed) and with the fingerpad (never use the finger tip or nail), gently rub into the scalp moving toward the crown and around the edges of the hair line even under the hair, but always moving towards the crown, never downward. Rinse immediately (do not let your shampoo stand in your hair for more than a minute, it strips your natural oils).

Rinsing With Herbs
Rinsing with herbal rinses are to take out the soap that the water didn't get out and it leaves your hair with a lustrous shine. By using the right herbs and infusing them in water with either apple cider vinegar or lemon juice you can achieve a good hair shine and returning oily and dry hair and scalp to normal. Sometimes when using rinses there is no need to even us a commercial conditioner.

What Herbs are Right For My Hair Color and Type
Dry hair or scalp: acacia, chamomile, clover, comfrey root, elder, oat straw.

Oily hair and/or scalp: bergamot, cassia/cinnamon chip, lemongrass, lemon peel, nettle, peppermint, rosebuds, white willow bark, witch hazel bark.

Dandruff: aloe, bergamot, birch bark, burdock, cassia/cinnamon chip, cloves, juniper leaves, lemongrass, nettle leaf and root, orange peel, peppermint, rosemary, willow.

Brunettes- rosemary, thyme, apple cider vinegar
Blondes & Red Heads- chammomile, lemon, orange


To Condition or Not to Condition?
After you have used an herbal rinse for the first time you will probably feel the need to condition it, especially if you have never used an herbal rinse. But after time your hair will start to condition itself and it will be better if you used no conditioner at all or at least limited it to once every third or fourth time you shower.

Using Commercial Conditioner (if needs be)
When you do condition with commercial conditioner place the largest amount of conditioner at the ends of your hair (since this is the area that gets all the damage, and the least moisture from your natural oils) and work your way up to the nap of neck, never go farther up than that**. Always think of your conditioner as a topical lotion that is going onto skin just to protect it, which means that you don't rub it in. Place the conditioner on your hair, not in it. Let it sit for up to three minutes (more if your hair is extremely dry, but the max is five minutes), this allows the conditioner time to soak through and hydrate your hair. I usually use this time to wash my body and shave, of course this only takes me about three to five minutes (if that much) so it works out really well.

Going All Natural
If are going to all herbal I would suggest, especially if you have dry hair to use pre-conditioner that will add extra oil to your natural oils, olive oil and coconut oil are the best. After you have pre-conditioned you can just use the herbal rinse as your shampoo, the herbs have a cleansing effect on your hair, so you really have no need to use soap. But, if you would like to use soap just for the sake of the soaponification feel you get from soap I would again suggest using something like Dr. Bronner's or any other herbal non-sulfate soap.


What do you think of going All-Natural in hair care?
Please leave me some feed back about through comment or the contact us page on my website


* disclaimer - Dr. Bronner's soaps are very good, but he expresses his beliefs on his bottles and they do not concur with mine.

**if you feel that your hair will be really really dry on the top part of your head, when you are through putting on the conditioner, just rub the flat of your hand on the top and sides of your head, the leftover conditioner should be enough to hydrate your sufficiently.