Please talk to me about Water Only

[mellie]

I recently purchased a very interesting book called "Earthly Bodies, Heavenly Hair," and among other somewhat controversial ideas (no soap for body washing, instead uses salt scrubs!) which I am very interested in, she advocates water-only (with oilings & some herbal rinses) for cleansing hair.

If you use this method, please tell me more! I am very interested. Do you have photos too? Since my hair is naturally so oily, I am very worried about looking like a "greasy hippie"! :-) I need to look professional for work, so please let me know if it works well for you!

[freznow]

Check out this thread http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=3412&highlight=water+article

Jessie58 has some great information.

I'm NW but used to be WO (Well I guess I don't really know what I am now :P but oh well) The big keys are massaging, water temperature, and water quality. Your hair can definitely look 'professional' on WO, but it will take a month or three to adjust and you will most likely be confined to updos during that time.

[mellie]

Thank you! :-)

[girlcat36]

I did WO for 4 months, and it really helped with frizzies. I had to go back to poo bars, though. My hair is very thin and I needed the volume that shampooing gives me.
If I had your type of hair, I definately would have stayed with it.

[pepperedmoth]

I've been WO for a month and a half (with oil and herbal rinses), and my hair never looks greasy except, obviously, right after I oil it.

Your scalp generally adjusts to produce less grease, and plain old water is pretty good at stripping away grease, anyway!

Your mileage may vary, however; my hair was horribly dry to start with so I was hoping to make it greasier. ;-)

[Sam-I-Am]

I was WO for 9 months or so last year. My signature picture is at the end of my WO experience. When I started WO I had an itchy, flaky scalp, and WO solved that problem at first. I think at the beginning of WO my scalp was irritated and dry. But by the end of my WO experiment my scalp was itchy and flaking again. At that point I think it was suffocating under all the sebum and may have had a fungal infection, so I went on to shampoo bars.

WO, for me, took a lot of time. My hair is thick but mostly medium texture, so there are a LOT of hairs. I was constantly "preening" the sebum down my hair to try to get my scalp happy. So when I found a job in August of last year (before that I had stayed home), I needed a routine that wasn't so high-maintenance.

But on WO my hair looked the best it EVER has. I loved what it did for my curls!

[Anje]

WO worked well for me for the most part, and probably would have been better had I spent a little more time trying to work the oils down my hair more. (I found my ends got dry, though. A monthly ends-only conditioning might be in order should I go back to it.) I quit after 8 or 9 months because got bored with it, but the WO bug is biting me again, so I may yet go back to it.

I also tried out washing my body with no soap -- just scrubbing a bit more with washcloth, brushes, or a loofah. Again, it worked quite well, but it took a little more time to scrub thoroughly. You can definitely get clean, at least from basic dirtiness (but maybe not advanced mudwrestling or paint-spattered dirtiness), without water. Quite a lot of people around here (LHC is where I got the idea) found it even reduced their BO, though I didn't notice a change.

[Meli]

WO with herbal rinses and oil (light oiling on ends) is exactly what I have found works best for my hair. I have no problems with greasies, I can easily wear my hair down in public if I want to after a WO-wash. The sebum coating I get with WO makes my hair thicker, stronger, wavier and overall healthier than with any other routine I have tried. It doesn't feel oily at all, unless I go longer than usual between washes. I have also got rid of my scalp itchies and dry flakes since I started with WO – and I shed literally NOTHING during a WO-wash – compared to the furry mammals I lose when I use shampoo.

Just for comparision, I'll mention that I got the stupid idea of giving CO a fair try recently. My hair got slightly dryer and frizzier after each wash, and after about one week I noticed a small increase of splits and a little scalp itchies. I had planned to try it for at least a couple of weeks, but as I ran out of conditioner and had not got any benefits from CO, I decided to go back to WO rather than buy more conditioner. Then I got this *brilliant* idea to clarify – just in case there was something in the conditioner that wouldn't go away with WO. At the moment I'm sitting here with a dry, frizzy, flyaway, poofy mess that doesn't want to cooperate at all – and it doesn't even feel like real hair... It also feels thinner – not only the individual strands, but also the ponytail circumference – I actually measured and averaged about ¼" less than usual. I don't EVER want to use shampoo again, and I can't wait until my hair recovers and get a proper sebum coating again. But at least I know for sure that I don't have any kind of build-up... :silly:

[mellie]

Thanks so much everyone! All of your hair looks so beautiful, I think I will definitely give it a try!

A few of you talked about "working the oils down to the ends of your hair". What tips can you suggest?

[frizzinator]

I did WO for 6 weeks last year, then I gave up water altogether. I've been NW (No Water) or SO (Sebum Only) for over 8 months ....no rinsing or anything ...nothing in my hair except my fingers and a horn comb and the occasional brush. Have a look at my photo album ...all photos are recent, and the oldest ones are no more than 5 months old.

The best tip I can give you for WO, is to comb your hair very well before you get it wet, and after you rinse, do not comb or fingercomb your hair until it is completely dry. Trust me. If I had to leave my house when my hair was wet, I would put the big massive tangled up mess up on my head with a huge claw clip, then take it down to dry whenever possible. The tangles simply fall out with very little fingercombing when your hair is completely dry.

[mellie]

Wow, frizzinator, that is incredible! Your hair is lustrous and beautiful!

[unaspenser]

You guys have me itching to go back to WO! I was really happy with it for a while, but I moved to an area with slightly harder water and it stopped working for me. I think summer's a good time to go WO because you can get away with a wet head without freezing, and I wear my hair up a lot then anyway.

[mellie]

Water = Frizz?

I just started trying WO (actually not even water at all), and I got three good days in. But then I walked home in a drizzle, and my hair frizzed out like crazy! The next morning my hair felt very greasy and heavy (and was still frizzy).

I gave in and shampoo'ed since I couldn't figure out what else to do. What would you suggest instead?

[MemSahib]

I did WO for a long time and also tried NW, but am back to mild shampoos. I disliked the almost stick look and feel my hair developed. You will note that I have babyfine hair, though, and it's perfectly straight. Your mileage may vary.

[frizzinator]

Mellie, you might benefit from going back to the archives and reading the WO thread. There is also a NW thread if you decide to give up water. Both threads continued on the new site.

Everybody seems to experience something different. The reason I tried WO and also NW, is because I'm trying to eliminate frizzy hair.

Earlier you asked about "working the oils down your hair". This preening is the key to eliminating frizz. Have a look at Snowy's Massage Techinque (archives - articles). When you massage the scalp, your fingertips are covered with sebum. Then, grab some hair near the scalp with your fingertips and draw the hair through your touching fingertips, moving your fingertips down the strands. You are moving sebum. This method seems to move sebum better than a bbb. Although for me, a bbb not only spreads but it also removes sebum.

I do this preening specifically where I see frizzy hair, but that's because I don't have enough sebum to spread on every hair. But even if you have plenty of sebum, there is not enough time to spread it on every hair.

[mellie]

Thanks frizzinator!

[Melisande]

Frizzinator, this is great advice from you, in different threads. I started scritiching, and now that I understand what preening means, I'll do that, too. I did fingertip massage with oil before but simple sebum massage is a great idea. I hope to be able to stretch my washings and strengthen my hair.

Thank you!