When it comes to my natural hair care there’s one staple product I rebuy regularly. It’s been 6 years now and clay washes have still been a holy grail in my 4c hair regimen. I love how uncomplicated this product is. No matter how bad your hair feels, it will feel amazing after it. Clay will give you the curl clumping you’ve been somehow assuming somewhere.
I strongly believe that Our type 4 hair – regardless to the hair type a / b / c/ – has a curl or wave pattern.
I don’t think that we have hair that just grows out of the scalp in different directions. There must be a pattern somewhere. But the problem is that type 4 hair has often a hard time to grow in uniformed hair strands. Some of the hair strands grow in uniformity, a lot of the individual hair strands just seem to grow in any directions they want.
We have seen many videos about type 3c and 4a hair clumping together when moisture or oil is applied. But type 4b to c hair is having a hard time clumping together.
To this day it is still a science to me and hair porosity plays a big role on how the hair reacts.
When I first wanted to go natural I saw my hair with other eyes. Before that I wasn’t even aware of what grows out of my scalp. I just new that we don’t have White hair and we’re also not Mixed. So this is what God gave us and it is designed to get a relaxer or texturiser into it in order to get manageable and beautiful.
So what did I observe for the first time while transitioning?
I noticed that the new grow has a curly and wavy pattern when I had box braids installed! It wasn’t a big pattern, it was really tiny, but I haven’t noticed it before. There was no awareness. Some new growth hair strands where also clumping together. I mean the part where the box braids is attached and the new growth is coming out. I could feel them with my fingers and I could also see them in the mirror.
So I was really amazed and even cut some of these clumping hair strands for further examination. 😂 These hair strands were something I have never seen before.
They were shiny, too!
At that time I couldn’t find any information on the internet about it and there was this general misconception that 4c hair has no curls. After doing the big chop I thought my hair would have this pattern all over my head. But no. Only patches of my new growth clumped into these tiny cork screw curls. The rest of my hair did what 4c hair does always. And believe me, I tried everything and even the Curly Girl Method. My hair did just not clump. Living with this fact was really hard, because I followed a lot of 3c and 4a ladies on YouTube and tried to do their tutorials with different gels, oils and Eco Styler Gel. But the results where still not like theirs.
After some time people where talking about the Maximum Hydration Method and I saw the videos of PinkeCube, ProtectivePrincess and msdeekay on Youtube. Wow, I could not believe it. They had hair like me and I have seen these tiny curls before! All of their hair strands did clump and they could do wash and gos. Their dried hair was curly too. This is where I learned about hair porosity and clay washes in the first place. PinkeCube is the original creator and her posts and recipes are still online on BlackHairMedia Forum.
As soon as I did my second big chop I tried it out and this method really worked. I eventually stopped this method because the Kinky Curly products and the bentonite clay where too pricey for me at that time in Germany. But the clay part of this regimen stayed. So when I found out about Rhassoul clay I switched to that. It’s easily available in the organic grow stores here and the German name is Lavaerde.