6 Steps To Transitioning
By Qhemet Biologics
The path from relaxed to natural hair is different for everyone. Some choose a big chop and embrace short styles, while others transition gradually through protective styles to retain length. During this time, you may have questions about how your natural texture will look and feel, the best products to use on both textures, or whether protective styles are the right choice. While it may seem daunting, the process is manageable—and worth it.
1. Learn About Your New Growth
While growing out chemically treated hair, it's not uncommon for hair to feel dry and hard. This may be unsettling at first, but it's a completely normal outcome that results from years of damaging chemical treatments. What's more, it'll probably take about 4-6 months of new growth to achieve a TWA (teeny weeny afro) so it's important to be patient. Familiarize yourself with your new, natural texture and monitor it for excessive dryness or breakage as it may take a while for your scalp and follicles to heal and for healthy hair to start growing in. Returning to your natural hair comes with a learning curve, and you'll find peace of mind if you know what to expect.
2. Don't Forget To Trim
As your natural hair grows in, it's important to start trimming away your relaxed ends. This process can be short or gradual depending on how long you want the transitioning phase to last. If you fail to trim, your relaxed ends will start to split upward and lead to breakage at the demarcation line where your natural and relaxed hair meet. A good rule of thumb is to start cutting off the straight hair after getting about an inch of new growth.
2. Keep It Moisturized
Caring for relaxed hair is different from caring for afro/coily hair. To keep relaxed hair healthy, you need to repair damage and minimize breakage with protein treatments and silicones. To keep coily hair healthy, you need to gently detangle and style it to minimize breakage and keep it consistently moisturized to preserve your edges and ends and retain length. These are new techniques you'll need to incorporate into your hair-care routine. Neglecting to hydrate your hair will inevitably result in dry, brittle tresses. Depending on whether your new growth seems to suck up moisture, an indication that you may have high porosity hair, or if moisture tends sit on top without being absorbed, an indication that you may have low porosity hair, you'll need a high quality moisturizer packed with nourishing ingredients to keep it soft. Our Amla & Olive Heavy Cream for high porosity hair and our Burdock Root Butter Cream for low porosity hair provide all the nutrients and moisture your hair will need to remain hydrated and healthy.
4. Be Gentle
Most importantly, you'll need to handle your hair with the care and attention it deserves. In other words, you'll need to be delicate with your hair. As its texture changes, the way you style it will need to change as well. Our Cocoa Tree Detangling Ghee and Moringa Tree Conditioning Ghee offer 3 in 1 conditioning along with moisturizing and detangling properties to help your fingers or a wide tooth comb effortlessly glide through your damp or dry hair without excessive pulling and breakage. Keeping your hair manageable through the use of gentle combing tools like our Detangling Brush and combing techniques that involve combing a small section of hair from the bottom and working your way up, are crucial to preventing damage. Our Cocoa Tree Detangling Ghee is an especially effective combing cream for extremely dry, new growth that's prone to tangling. If your hair is thin and/or your relaxed hair is more in need of the detangling, our Moringa Tree Conditioning Ghee may be a better fit.
5. Find A Hairstyle That You Like
Now that you'll be working with two textures, finding a complimentary hairstyle will be a trial and error process. You'll find that your natural hair wants to grow upward while your relaxed hair hangs down. With that in mind, you'll want to find a hairstyle and hair products that are compatible with both textures. Qhemet offers products that can be used on both relaxed and natural hair (see our product guide
here). Our
Aethiopika Hydrate & Twist Butter is a versatile, hydrating styling butter that can be used to create beautiful protective styles like cornrows, braids and twists and can keep both textures soft and smooth. These styles can help prevent your new growth from drying out and give it a break from the daily manipulation that can lead to premature breakage. Wearing your hair out is also a possibility but this means straightening the new growth to match the two textures and possibly damaging it right out of the gate. It's important to keep your new growth as healthy as possible before heat straightening as the stronger it is, the better able it is to withstand the potential damage from heat styling. Our
Moringa Tree Conditioning Ghee is the perfect leave-in to use before heat straightening as it conditions and detangles and can help prevent the new growth from shrinking.
6. Nourish Your Scalp For Healthy Hair Growth
If you've been relaxing your hair for years or even decades, your scalp and follicles are most likely damaged. Since healthy hair can only grow from a healthy scalp, it's important to focus on scalp health and addressing scalp conditions, like flakiness or dryness, while you transition. Harsh chemicals can damage hair follicles and stunt growth as healthy hair can't grow out of inflamed follicles that have been blocked by scar tissue. To get your scalp healthy again, the first step is to calm the inflammation and address the flakiness. Our
MSM + ROSEMARY Scalp Nutrients Balm is formulated with powerhouse nutraceuticals and herbs that contain soothing and healing properties. You'll want to apply this therapeutic balm to your scalp 2-3 times a week to restore your scalps health and jumpstart growth.
For general scalp health and to ensure strong, healthy new growth, we created the
Castor & Amla Nourishing Pomade. This Pomade contains potent African and Ayurvedic ingredients used traditionally for thousands of years to nourish the scalp, combat shedding and boost growth. This Pomade will also help to prevent breakage along the fragile natural/relaxed demarcation line and keep it soft and supple.
7. Be Patient While You Adjust
Transitioning from straight to afro/coily hair takes time and patience. You may feel discouraged with the pace or the learning curve, but stay the course and keep in mind that nothing worthwhile comes easy. With consistency, a healthy routine, and our trusted products, your patience will pay off with a healthy, flourishing mane!
