My Henna Story: Part 1

Henna for me was a game changer.

 

I have known about henna as a dye used to decorate skin from my school days. I would see my Indian school mates coming to school with the pretty henna tattoos and I would excitedly get my own hands done. I remember vaguely too that they used it to dye their hair naturally.

Women with henna tattoos on their hands
Source: Tumblr

 So when I, with my extremely damaged head of fine flyaway hair, heard about henna being a great hair treatment for damaged and fine hair, I quickly jumped on the bandwagon. I immediately went and bought a hair dye that had the word henna on it, but it was ‘black henna’ from the Indian grocer since I didn’t really want to have red hair at the time.  I went home and mixed it, looked at it and thankfully felt uneasy enough to go research more.

 

Firstly, any henna that is not a brownish/greenish powder and when mixed is not a greenish/brownish colour, is not natural henna. Whatever it is, might actually cause you more harm than good because it is just a hair dye not henna. Plus the chemicals in those ‘henna dyes’ might be dangerous.

To apply it on the hair; Henna powder is mixed with water and then applied on the hair (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Second, to do any treatment on your hair, especially henna, make sure you do your RESEARCH! When doing a henna treatment, one needs to be fully informed on the process.

 

So back to my story, I researched more. I got the Henna for Hair book by Catherine Cartwright-Jones (it’s online for free) and I read blog articles on the process. I made sure I was aware of the pros and cons. I was a little worried about the red dye effect, the messy process of applying it and the possibility of losing my curl pattern. Nonetheless I took the plunge. I started off intensely, by doing full henna treatments every week for four weeks, then once a month for about 6 months, now I do full treatments about every 3 months. I do a henna gloss when needed (I’ll explain all these terms in my next post).

 

Immediately after my first treatment, although I didn’t see a difference, no red colour and no change in my curls, praise God, my hair stopped breaking immediately. After about four applications, my hair indoors was a shiny dark black and under certain lights, had a red gloss to it, like highlights. I absolutely loved it. Even to this day, my curl pattern hasn’t changed, my hair is stronger, is shiny and best of all my strands are thicker.

 

The best thing about the henna treatments is that all the ingredients are natural and therefore very cheap.

 

I will explain my henna gloss and full henna treatments in the Part 2.