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As a curly-crowned queen, it’s common to have to work through tangles and knots. Your hair is prone to tangling because of its coil pattern. Tangling occurs as a result of many different things and none of them are worth berating yourself over. The important thing is, you must acknowledge that your hair gets tangled and learn how to detangle it correctly so you can avoid unnecessary pain, damage to your hair and loss of time.
We already listed some benefits to detangling above but one that is often not mentioned in hydration. When you detangle your hair, you allow for an even distribution of moisture to occur thus ensuring that your entire maine is properly hydrated and nourished.
Detangling also helps manage breakage. If you feel like your hair isn’t growing and it has been in protective styles all year, chances are, you aren’t detangling your hair correctly and as a result, you’re losing length due to breakage.
So how does one detangle correctly? Well, the process may vary from person to person but the fundamentals are all the same.
Start with your fingers
Run your fingers through your hair. This starts the detangling process and helps you identify where your knots are located.
Work in sections
Part your hair into manageable sections. Sectioning your hair into 4 blocks helps make the process of detangling that much more manageable and increases your effectiveness. Working through sections ensures that you’re doing a thorough job at removing any knots while helping to maximize curl definition.
Always add moisture
Never ever ever detangle your hair whilst dry. This is a foolproof way to break your hair. You should keep a spray bottle beside you to spray water as you go along. Once you’ve gone through your first round of detangling using water and a wide tooth comb, the second round starts after you’ve lathered your hair with some good sulfate and paraben free conditioner.
Start at the top
Naturally, you may want to start combing your hair from root to tip but according to many professional hairstylists, you should actually be working the other way around - from your ends upward. The reason for this is to prevent excessive pulling of the hair from the root, which can actually cause more damage. This is particularly important if you’re detangling after a protective style.
Set aside time
Rushing through detangling is a huge mistake that many people make because not enough time is set aside for the process. Beside the fact that removing knots isn’t fun, it can also be very painful so your natural inclination could be to get it over with as soon as possible but that is the exact opposite thing that you should do. Don’t rush, slow touch. A proper detangle session shouldn’t be an hours-long process, but it’s not something that you want to do when you’re late for work or catching a flight soon. Set aside at least 15 - 20 minutes for a proper, gentle detangling session.
And there you have it, the fundamentals of detangling your hair so you no longer have to find yourself tangled in confusion.
If you have any other questions on detangling, ask away and we will do our best to give you the answers!
Love MPL.