Want to wash your hair more naturally?

You have changed your whole body care regime towards being more natural, paying the utmost attention to the ingredient lists of everything that you spread or splash onto your face and body, you already eat unprocessed and maybe organic food to be healthy from inside out. Only 2 areas remain. Hair and underarms. We'll move onto underarms in the next post, but let's look at a solution for hair today.

Natural shampoo is a bit of an oxymoron. Shampoos need many ingredients which are not so natural in order to clean and condition the hair and make a good lather and leave your tresses looking beautiful and healthy. So what do you do if you want a more natural haircare regime? Maybe it is time that you tried handmade soap. Momma Zen (soon to be known as AromaZen) makes a great soap especially for hair with hair nurturing ingredients including olive oil, castor oil, rosemary oil, laurel oil, nettle and hempseed oil).

Did you say use soap on my hair? I hear you ask. Even those with long manes of hair are happy with the results from using handmade soap. Let me give you tips on how to use soap to wash your hair. But beware, because soap does not strip your hair of oil, like conventional shampoos, there could be a few bad hair days as you change your regime, so plan accordingly. Also make sure you choose a handmade soap as opposed to just anything at the supermarket labelled soap. Read the ingredients list and make sure there is only oils, essential oils and herbs or other botanical additives. The only other name which may look unnatural is 'saponified olive oil' or sodium olivate. These 2 names are the same and just mean olive oil (or other oils) which was been through the process for making soap.

Just wash your hair as normal and lather the soap and rub it into your hair well and then wash it out, just as you would do with shampoo. Instead of applying a conditioner you will then make a 100ml solution of 20% natural / organic apple cider vinegar (organic elma sirkesi if you are here in Turkey) and 80% water. If you have some essential oils add a drop or 2 of rosemary or chamomile, both of which are great for shiny hair and hair in general. You will then use this as a rinse. You can rinse it out with water afterwards or leave it in. The vinegar smell disappears in a few minutes even if you don't rinse it out. You need to follow soap with a rinse as your hair is not used to soap which does not strip your hair of all its natural oils. It will therefore be a very bad hair day without the rinse! Soap has a high ph as it is alkaline and vinegar is acidic so this rinse makes it ph balanced and gives you a good hair day! The balance of alkaline and acidic is what is needed for healthy hair. When you first convert to washing your hair with soap you might need to use the rinse with every wash but as your hair gets used to your new regime, you will only need to do it every once every 2-3 weeks. You might also have a bad hair day on the first day of conversion, but better days await you, so persevere, you will indeed be thankful. Also, as part of your new natural regime, you can also add 2-3 drops of hair oil (also available from Momma Zen with hair loving oils of coconut oil, hempseed oil, broccoli seed oil and argan oil) to your wet or dry hair as a conditioner but this is only really necessary for dry or treated hair or the ends of all hair, but it helps all hair to become shinier and look healthier.

Enjoy your naturally clean hair!