HOW TO GO NATURAL
How To Go From Relaxed To Natural Hair
If you are reading this post, you are either thinking about how to go natural or how to return natural. So guess what? You are in the right place. I have listed 3 STEPS BELOW TO MAKE YOUR TRANSITION FROM RELAXED TO NATURAL HAIR FAST AND EASY.
Big Chop or Transition
First things first, you need to decide either to Big chop or Transition.
Big Chop basically means chopping off all your relaxed, texturised, texlaxed, bleached, damaged, whatever state your hair is in- chopping everything off and transitioning means slowly allowing your natural hair to grow underneath your damaged hair.
Now, I personally transitioned because at the time, I was very conscious of having short hair.
I was super conscious of cutting all my hair off because I wanted something to put in a bun to style so I decided to transition for seven months and then I got tired of seeing my relaxed ends looking very unhealthy and dead so I just ✂️✂️✂️ cut them off.
That’s the first step you need to take. You either need to make the decision to transition or to big chop.
Regimen
After you’ve made your decision, you have to think about having a Regimen. A regimen basically means, what you constantly do to your hair to keep it healthy and to retain growth. So as your hair grows, a regimen makes sure your hair breaks less than how fast it grows. (That’s the whole secret to retaining length to be honest so you really need a regimen.
A regimen consists of:
- Pre-poo Shampoo
- Deep conditioning
- Apple cider vinegar rinse
- Leave in conditioner
- Hair moisturiser
- Hair butter and
- Oil
**Remember, everyone has different textures and porosity levels**
Now, I am going to explain the steps for a regimen.
Pre-poo
Is what you do before you shampoo and you can use an oil or butter to pre-poo for 10minutes underneath a shower cap. It keeps your hair soft. That’s the whole purpose of pre-poo and it prevents your shampoo from stripping out all the moisture from your hair.
Shampoo
Are meant to cleanse your hair without leaving it dry. When you go natural you will find out that there are two types of Shampoos. “Moisturising Shampoo” and “Clarifying Shampoo”. Moisturising shampoos will keep your hair soft while cleansing your hair. While clarifying shampoos—some can keep your hair soft but most times they leave your hair squeaky clean and slightly dry so use this when your hair is really dirty or once a month or once in 2 months.
Deep Conditioner
Are the back bones of natural hair, they keep your hair strengthened, hydrated and feeds your hair.
Apple Cider vinegar Rinse
An apple cider vinegar rinse brings the pH (potential of hydrogen) of your hair back to its original level. What this does, is that it helps your cuticles lie flat thereby reducing the chances of split ends and single strand knots.
Now that’s for the washing part of wash day regimen.
For styling, you need a leave in conditioner first, to keep your hair conditioned.
A hair moisturiser to add that extra softness and moisture.
Then an oil.
Some people use oils before the moisturisers, as I said earlier, hair porosity really matters so it really depends on your hair type.
How To Comb Natural Hair
Now, if you are wondering when exactly you are supposed to comb your hair, in natural hair slang we call combing detangling.
There are 2 ways to comb natural hair, with a wide-tooth comb and with your fingers.
I use my fingers.
It took me a while to learn but I learnt in my first year of going natural.
For some people it takes longer. It takes a bit of practise but then you have less breakage. You lose a little bit more time so you have less breakage and hence, longer hair.
I finger detangle before I shampoo, so that’s after I pre-poo while my hair is really soft, I section my hair into about 6-10 twists and then I do not release my hair till after.
People always ask me this. Do you release your hair to deep condition and then re-twist again?
No.
My hair is in twists while I deep condition until I need to style. That’s when I take my twists down.
Thereafter, I apply a leave in conditioner, hair moisturiser and then style. I could twist my hair again, braid or I could just style my hair.
That’s what I do but then you could do something different. Do whatever works for you.
In summary, I comb my hair, once or twice during my washdays, and through the week I keep my hair in a style for maintenance.
I don’t take my hair down every night to re-twist. However, you can if you chose to wear your hair out quite often.
For me, my hair is in protective styles 100% of the time, you can check my Instagram to see the kind of different styles I create with my own hair so I don’t need to take my hair down all the time to re-twist. Once my hair is in a particular style, all I need to do is use a hair mist.
Tips for Natural Hair
When your natural hair begins to grow, sometimes it gets really thick like mine. I will show you my relaxed hair photo here.
My hair got thicker, it got fuller and it got lots more voluminous. You should see my volume checks, its crazy.
So it’s always easier to deal with natural hair in sections. Divide it into 4, divide it into more than 4, however much that is convenient for you is absolutely perfect.
Before I forget, keep your hair from drying out overnight by sleeping with a satin scarf or satin bonnet.I prefer using scarves because, they just stay on and they don’t pull on my edges. Full edges for the win ya’ll, full edges for the win! Some satin bonnets actually pull on your hair so be careful.
Other products that you can integrate into your natural hair regimen are as follows:
What else do you need to know?
If you have anymore questions, or if I left anything out, please add it in the comment section below. If you need more information, I read your comments even though I’m not able to reply every single person so I’ll make videos around your comments in the near future in other to help you more. So make sure you Subscribe to my YOUTUBE so you don’t miss out on answers to your questions and obviously don’t forget to follow me on social media. I have loads of tips there. I hope the video above was really helpful, let me know what kind of questions you want me to answer, what kind of topics you want me to cover in the comment section.
15 comments
Hi IgboCurls ?
Thank you so much for the hair tips. I really really love your hair, and I have lots of questions.
But the first one is about combing. I tend to comb my hair a lot, infact everyday when I’m not carrying a weave.
I feel like if I don’t comb it, it won’t be smooth and nice and neat, especially because it’s still on the short side (plus I’m not quite sure which hair group I belong to, 4c? 3c?…?)
Is this a good thing? What do you suggest?
Hi Omle!
I apologise for my late response. Hmm…let me answer your combing question first with a few questions. How short exactly is your hair? And how do you wear it when it’s not under weaves? In an Afro? Picked out?
It’s okay if you don’t know your hair type yet. You can learn by simply observing your hair. Is it thick? How do the curls look? Loose? Kinky? Curly? These questions would help me to help you better.
I transitioned for 11 months before bigchopping. However I’m having a little problem with getting my styles to last more than a day.
Could you do a post on preserving hairstyles on TWA. Also Could you make a progress album on how you went from your TWA to waistlength( your different length checks). It would be a lot of help and inspiration to many newbie naturals( myself included).
Thanks in advance.
BTW, I’m an avid fan of your hair and would love to get to that length.
Hi Annabela!
I already have a youtube video that shows my progress. You can watch it here and share with your friends and family too if they need some inspiration.
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=EkXSjGtAsxA
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=io49EExcSd4
On another note, do you wear satin scarves to sleep? That is usually my best method of preserving styles even on short hair.
Thank you so much for your tips I will start from cutting off the permed hair
You’re welcome!!?
I think your site is awesome! Keep up the good work 🙂
I’ve always struggled with really bad knots, a damaged crown area and hair that won’t grow beyond BSL. I can literally put my hair in a neat bun, and it will get knotted after 3 days causing me to need to break out my scissors. I definitely cannot ever leave my hair out. Do you get really bad knots like me and how do you deal with it? Background: almost 10 years natural. I have very fine 4c hair. The front of my hair will not grow beyond my chin. The back is strongest but keeps knotting so I have to cut it.
Hi Chichi!
Thank you very much!
I apologise for my delay in responding. It’s quite easy to reduce the knots. What I do is, whenever I want to wear my hair in a bun, I twist the ends (not so tightly of course so that doesn’t turn into a knot as well).You can find a pictorial here. https://igbocurls.com/floppy-fro-to-twisted-bun-pictorial/
I hope this helps!
How often should oil and cream be added to hair?
Every 2-3 days is good enough.
Hi ,igbocurls.
I absolutely love what you do with your hair. I hope mine becomes like yours someday. My problem is styling my TWA ,I usually get confused as to how to take care of my hair(it’s very short ,thick and the shrinkage is 100%)
My mum tells me to stretch with thread but I hate it. I sincerely don’t know what to do.
Hi Mariam, how short do you mean? If it can be stretched with thread, it can be stretched with braids and twists too. Let me know if you need more help.
Why am I just finding out about you?😩 anyway my natural hair journey just begun and I’ve been transitioning for 10 months. I had long enough relaxed hair but I’m pretty anxious about natural hair coz mine is thick 😃
I’m hoping to start my journey with you holding my hands 😃
Btw: I love your spirit. You seem to have a lovely bubbly personality 😁
Thank you Uneks! I’m glad you found me too! Let me know if you need any help. My new book coming out soon will be great for you!