Updated: July 16, 2023
One of the keys to growing long healthy hair is having a solid hair regimen. Some of you may already know this. However, what you may not know is that incorporating Ayurvedic practices into your hair regimen might just be the boost your natural hair needs to reach its full potential!
Here at Hibiscus Roots, we prioritize health over length when it comes to hair. Especially because we can only know the true length of our hair when it is healthy!
A solid hair regimen is made up of defined ways to cleanse, moisturize, and strengthen the hair. These are the three pillars that create balance, especially for 4C hair strands.
To grow long hair, our goal should be to keep the hair that’s coming from our roots, as well as the hair at our ends healthy. This ensures hair strength, resistance to breakage, and thinning, which ultimately leads to length.
Our hair is unique, and we should continue to keep that in mind as we read about new products or tips for natural hair care. Your final regimen will depend on your hair type, hair porosity, hair density, and even your budget!
We’re proud to say that even a beginner can make an ayurvedic regimen that’s personalized for your natural hair strands, that’s easy to tweak, and easy on the wallet following these simple steps!
How to Build the Perfect Beginner Ayurvedic Hair Regimen for Natural Hair
A perfect hair regimen is something we should look at from both a long-term and short-term point of view.
I’ve had the Shampoo-Moisturize-Co-wash-Moisturize-Shampoo regimens in the past and learned the hard way that they do not work for me.
These to-repeat-weekly hair regimens did not leave enough room for intuition, or for listening to my hair. These are two elements I strongly attribute to the drastic improvement of my curls.
As a result, I’ve learned that the simple building blocks for the perfect Ayurvedic natural hair regimen are the following:
1. Know your hair (type, porosity, density, etc)
Your regimen will depend heavily on what kind of hair you have. This will help you decide how often to cleanse, what kind of shampoo to use, how to moisturize (LOC vs. LCO), etc.
It’s important to have a good idea of what kind of hair you have before attempting to care for it.
Related Post: 3 Aspects of Your Curly Hair Type that Matter More than Curl Pattern!
2. Know your natural hair goals (length, volume, strength)
The next thing to know when building the perfect routine for your natural hair is what goals to achieve. Your routine will fluctuate as your hair goals change. This is important because your hair goals should change.
For example, when the weather is colder and drier in the winter, you will want more moisture in your hair. Similarly, when it’s warmer and your hair is probably in the anagen phase, you may want to encourage hair growth!
3. Track your hair progress
Take pictures of your hair! I can’t stress enough how important it is to do this. For months I thought my ayurvedic hair care regimen wasn’t working and my effort was in vain. I was frustrated until I started getting compliments from my friends who started asking what I was doing differently!
Keeping a hair journal is another way to track progress which you may not be doing already. It is critical in visualizing what is and isn’t working in your hair care based on your own real-time feedback!
How to Use a Hair Journal to Track Your Progress
You can do this in any notebook, I usually do this in the Paper app because I prefer digital note-taking and journaling anyways. I keep a running list of what I call a “State of the Union” table for my hair strands. Stay with me. It’s basically a table with two columns – the left one titled “loves” and the second one, “doesn’t love.”
After every new recipe, ingredient, or natural hair product I try I write down whether my hair loved or didn’t love it. If I notice that my hair is reacting well to a product I’ve been using, I really dig into the ingredients and compare it with another product that didn’t work so well.
This is how I was able to find out that my high porosity hair, despite all the internet’s recommendations, is not a fan of glycerin, especially in the first five ingredients of a product.
Knowing this now saves me a lot of time and money when product hunting because I know if I see a product with glycerin as a major component – it’s probably not going to work for me!
It’s the perfect guide to mindful progress-tracking!
What You Need for A Simple Ayurvedic Natural Hair Regimen
1. Cleansing your Natural Hair
We usually suggest cleansing hair once every week, every 10 days, or every two weeks depending on your hair’s needs.
For example, my scalp tends to get inflamed and itchy when I go too long without washing my hair. This is my hair directly telling me how to take care of it.
You can choose to cleanse your hair with:
Try out each cleanser, pick which of them your hair likes, and stick with it.
For example, I find that I can keep my scalp cleaner for longer if I spray my scalp with Aloe Vera juice often. I also like to use my DIY African black soap shampoo as a powerful cleanser when I need to deep cleanse my hair.
I use a clay wash more often to maintain clean hair and replenish moisture. And I use the aritha shampoo once in a while when I need a very gentle cleanse.
2. Deep Conditioning your Hair
Deep conditioning is the simple act of applying a deep conditioning product to your hair, leaving it on for an extended period of time, and then rinsing it off.
For example, because my hair is high porosity, I like to alternate moisturizing deep conditioners and strengthening treatments using henna-based glosses.
Henna is great for high porosity hair because it literally builds a layer on the surface of your hair strands, filling the holes and gaps in your cuticle. This prevents the moisture you’ve worked so hard to get in your hair from escaping.
You can choose to deep condition your hair using any of the following:
- Henna Glosses
- Fenugreek
- Moringa
- Other Moisturizing and Hydrating DIY Hair Masks
- Other Protein and Strengthening Hair Masks
Depending on your natural hair porosity, you can also try out things like steaming your natural hair to condition it!
3. Moisturizing your Hair
Listen to your hair. We’re not going to prescribe that you moisturize your hair every day or every other day.
Moisturize your hair when your hair needs it, i.e. when you feel your hair is starting to dry out.
- Spritz your hair with water or an Ayurvedic tea.
- Use a good leave-in conditioner that works for your hair.
- Seal the moisture in with a cream, then an oil. (LCO method) OR an oil, then a cream (LOC method) depending on your hair’s needs.
- You can use natural moisturizers like Aloe Vera Juice as your liquid, or instead of a leave-in conditioner.
- Next, can use a rich, penetrating, ayurvedic oil like Avocado Oil as your oil.
- Try using a whipped shea butter mix, or a homemade batch of chebe butter as your cream to seal all that moisture and nutrition in!
4. Styling your Natural Hair
Style your hair in ways that leave your hair and strands both accessible for care and protected from manipulation. Here at HR, we love mini-twists – really twists of any size.
I keep mine in for up to 3 weeks and style them like I would my free strands! The twists can be styled in buns, ponytails, updos, etc to keep the ends protected.
For example, you can style your hair in Mini Twists, and use this ayurvedic flaxseed gel in the process of installing your twists. This helps keep the ends of your hair strengthened and elongated and can help prevent tangling.
Related Post: 7 QUICK Steps to a Simple Natural Hair Regimen!
5. Promoting Natural Growth
Incorporate tools like scalp massages with Ayurvedic oils for natural hair growth. Feel free to do this every other day or as much as you want without flooding your scalp with oil or causing too much product build-up.
Give yourself the freedom to try new methods and add them to your state of the union.
We encourage you to try everything within reason.
To promote hair growth, we suggest experimenting with:
- The inversion method (read more here),
- Scalp massagers (we love this one from Amazon)
- Tea rinses to prevent hair shedding
- Zinc supplements,
- Onion juice, and
- Rice water.
Fit it in, but give each method enough time to decide whether you love it or not before you try the next one, or a combination.
An Example Beginner Ayurvedic Hair Regimen for 4C Natural Hair
Here’s an example of a great beginner-friendly ayurvedic regimen for kinky / type 4 hair.
Hair type: High porosity, coarse, medium-density hair.
Hair goals: Moisture-retention, length.
Feel free to tweak this regimen to make sure it works for you!
Saturday
- Cleanse: Wash hair with a clay shampoo (alternatively, a rich natural moisturizing shampoo). Don’t use a clay wash if you will deep condition with Henna. Don’t wash your hair just because it’s Saturday either. If your hair still feels clean and hydrated, skip the wash and deep condition and just moisturize your hair.
- Deep Condition: Deep condition hair with a moisturizing deep conditioner with ayurvedic oils and herbs for length and moisture mixed in. Check out our Hibiscus Roots Ayurvedic Ingredients Glossary for help with this.
- Moisturize: Moisturize hair using the LCO method. A glycerin-free leave-in conditioner, a whipped shea butter cream, and an Ayurvedic sealing oil.
- Style: Put hair in chunky or mini-twists to avoid manipulation during the week. This prevents breakage from the ends, while physically keeping moisture locked in.
Sunday
- Scalp Massage: Apply a stimulating Ayurvedic oil mix to your fingertips, then massage your scalp for between 5 to 10 minutes.
(I personally do this because my scalp doesn’t respond well to applying a lot of oil directly to it. I find it quickly leads to a lot of build-up.)
Monday
- Do nothing if your hair still feels moisturized from Sunday’s care. It might!
Tuesday
- Massage your scalp as you did on Monday.
- Re-moisturize your hair using the LOC method this time, and products from Sunday.
Wednesday
- Do nothing. Your hair will still feel moisturized from the previous day!
Thursday
- Massage your scalp as usual.
Note that you don’t have to use an oil every time you massage your scalp. Doing so can quickly lead to build-up and subsequently, itchiness.
You can simply spray your scalp with water to make sure it’s hydrated, and that you reduce friction from the massage.
Friday
- Remoisturize your hair using the LOC method, but this time using an Ayurvedic hair refreshing spritz! (Our go-to mix is a 50-50 ratio of Aloe Vera Juice and Water, with a teaspoon of hibiscus leaves thrown in.)
For more in-depth information on Ayurvedic 4C hair care, see this post.
For a detailed video by one of our favorite YouTubers explaining how she builds her own Ayurvedic hair regimen, see this video:
featured image: source
