Rhassoul Clay

[linnepinne]

Hi fellow LHCers! (it felt really great to be able to write that!) :)

I've just started washing my hair with Rhassoul clay, and after just the first wash, i'm hooked! i loooooove how it makes my hair feel.
Voluminus, bouncy, more body, clean and it feels like it stays clean for way longer than with CO (for me anyway, who have a problem with greasy roots). Plus it fels creamy and gentle, and it is just as detangling as any conditioner.

Now i'm curious if anyone else uses this wonderful product, and if you have eay tips for experiments? Next time i'm thinking of mixing in some honey and aloe vera for extra moisture.
So, how do you use your Rhassoul? And how is it working out for you? Are there any downsides?

Many thankas/ linnepinne

[kitten1986]

This looks interesting, I have never heard of it before... I might have to give it a go :D

[aenflex]

Can you talk about the process you used? And rinsing and such?

[linnepinne]

Right, so this is what i did today:

I used a small plastic bottle (empty shampoo bottle for traveling) and shook toghether 1 tbsp of clay and mayble 50 ml of water (you'll probably need more with thicker hair). It gets quite runny this way, but its easier to spread through the hair IMO.
Then i made a CWC using first a cheap conditioner just to protect my ends. I used the bottle, witch has a small opening to evenly distribute the "goo" all over my roots. I massaged really well and let it sit for maybe 5 minutes. Then i rinsed well (don't forget to rinse of the shower too, or else it will look awful and dirty (though it's not) the next time you shower. The clay easily gets splattered everywhere.), and then i added my "good" cone free conditioner. Let that sit for the rest of the shower session and rinsed again.

My hair feels really thick, clean and fresh! Good luck :)

[aenflex]

Hmmm....sounds interesting. You have piqued my curiousity :) Worst comes to worse I could use it on my skin as a mask if I don't like it in my hair.

[GoddesJourney]

It is usually used to pull the oil from your face, isn't it? I wonder if this wouldn't be too drying over time. I wonder if you could use it as a dust for a dry shampoo, just to get out the greasy roots?

[linnepinne]

Yes it makes an exellent facemask!

Hm, i dont think it is that drying... But i guess i will know in time :) To me it feels very mild, cleansing but gentle, and on my facial skin aswell.

I would not recomend to use it as a dry shampoo! It's brown in coulour (might work if you're dark haired i suppose), and what if you start to sweat and the dry clay becomes mud in your roots? Well maybe if you massage it in, let it sit for a while , and then brush or comb out? Something to experiment with for sure!

[dragonette@1]

Where did you buy the rhassoul please?

[linnepinne]

I bought it from a swedish company that sells ingredients for natural and herbal beauty care. Their website is www.crearome.se

But it might be useless to you, since the website and company is swedish! I would reccomend you to google it, there must be somewhere you can get a hold of it. Best of luck!

[emmabovary]

Hello linnepinne :)

I haven't tried crearome's rhassoul, but I bought some from another Swedish store, and another jar from a British one.. it worked really well for getting the excess coconut oil out of my hair and it made it pretty shiny.. but I was pretty disappointed by it apart from that. My mom used to live in Morocco and she always says the rhassoul she bought at the market there was the thing that saved her bleached to pieces hair (or should I say straw), that it felt like silk or eggwhite when she put it in her hair.. she tried the ones I got but said they were nothing like it.

In Morocco people usually mix it with a bit of argan oil. That's what I do too, otherwise my hair would get way too dry. But I don't know if the rhassoul clay I got is 100 % pure or if it's bad quality or whatever.

[anilov]

Is it anything like the Urtekram Rassoul schampoo? I remember I had a bottle of it a few years ago, it felt quite weird with a totally black schampoo :).

[Karala]

I love rhassoul clay! It doesn't seem to be so popular on this board, but in my opinion, it deserves to be more widely known and appreciated!

I don't find it drying at all, actually, it's way softer then any foaming shampoo I've tried! It actually makes the hair just as soft and tangle-free as if you'd used conditioner, except it doesn't make hair limp, but rather very light and voluminous.

For me, the trick is to make the paste runny enough (think yogurt consistency), otherwise your hair will come out a mess. Also, I've noticed that if I add anything to my rhassoul clay + water mix, it doesn't come out as efficient.

I don't use it so often though, because I'm afraid of clay pulling out some of my henna, and also because it's not quite as easy to use as regular shampoo (you have to prepare the mix, then let it sit on your hair some, and then after you need to rinse your shower carefully so that it does'nt stay muddy all over)

In case your hair doesn't like it, it also makes a very good non-agressive face mask :)

[linnepinne]

I totally agree with you Karala! Rhassoul clay is very much underestimated! It seems like we get similar results using this cleansing method. I love the clean, silky and bouncy feeling the clay gives my hair. Although I don't really think that it's that time consuming or difficult to use at all. Compared to CO anyway! :)
But consistency is important, like you said. I havent tried mixing it with something else yet, but I had plans to try some honey or aloe vera. Great of you to give a heads up that the results may not be the same!

Thanks for your post too emmabovary! I can really reccomend you to try crearomes Rhassoul. It gives me that feeling you just described: It feels silky (slimy? :cheese:), and kind of creamy/soapy both on my skin and in my hair. And it cleans very gentle to me. Maybe your clay is poor quality or mixed with something else?
But I dont know if the key to our different experiences might be that our hairs are totally different? My hair is straight and silky with a bit of a grease problem. My hair is not very dry, but still gets brittle if I don't moisturize it properly... or maybe it's the water!! Where I live, the water is really soft. Maybe the Rhassoul behaves differently with hard water?

anilov: Not sure since I havent tried Urtekrams Rhassoul shampoo. But I read the ingredients lable once and thought about giving it a try. It does contain real Rhassoul clay, but also som other SLS free tenside/cleanser. If any of you try it, let us know how you liked it :)

[emmabovary]

I agree that it does make the hair feel silky, light and bouncy. Unfortunately it also makes it feel a bit dry to me, and pulls out my curls :( I don't know about one of my jars, but the other should be of high quality.. maybe it's just the difference in our hair types. Yeah, it definitely works better if you make the mix runnier :)

[Angharad]

I've been using ghassoul (Logona http://www.naturaleurope.com/ne/L-00450.html
and a brand named Chorfa al akdhar http://www.souk-artisanat-marocain.com/boutique/produits-de-beaute/rhassoul/rhassoul-ou-ghassoul-chorfa-al-akhdar-500-gr/ ) for quite some time now and I love it; it works really well for my hairtype.

Important for my hair is to heavy pre-oil the night before washing because otherwise it could be to drying for my hair, but when I stick to the pre-oil ritual the ghassoul works wonders for my hair; the curls are so wavy and my hair feels soft.

I just add some hot water with the ghassoul pieces (or powder from Logona) and it dissolves really easy and I just dab it gently into my hair, leave it it for about 5 to 10 minutes and rinse out very well. Afterwards I always use a conditioner and when I do that my hair feels a bit weird (sticky almost) but after rinsing the conditioner and airdry my hair looks and feels great.

[faeflame]

I used Rhassoul clay to wash my hair for over four years and loved it!! It made my hair so soft and full and for the first time ever I didn't have to use conditioner or wash every day. Unfortunately, I must have been a bit sensitive to it. I kept getting weepy, crusty, itchy earlobes that I tried everything for and never connected to my using the Rhassoul until they cleared up when I went back to regular shampoos.
For what it is worth, I went back to regular shampoos after reading an article about clay lung- where small particle of silica get in the lungs and cause an overgrowth of tissue and breathing problems. I already have asthma, my folks both have OPD, and Mom also has lung cancer. With that rotten luck I decided to be a scaredy-cat and not to take any chances.
I miss the Rhassoul soooo much! None of the shampoos I've tried have left my hair as full and bouncy as it did, big sigh!!!!:(

[Angharad]

@ Faeflame:

I have asthma too and with preparing of ghassoulpowder and cassiatreatments I always suffered from inhaling little particles of the powder that led to breathing problems.

I have solved this problem by going to a DIY-store and buy one of these "mouthcaps" (don't know the rigth word for it) and whenever I want to prepare ghassoul or cassia I put on this cap and I have no problems whatsoever.

I read you have had problems with itchy earlobes; maybe if you don't ghassoul all the time but use also a shampoo or CO-washing this doesn't effect you so much when using ghassoul constantly.
Or maybe take a different brand and see if you still get the itchyness.

[Henna Sooq]

Just read the first post, but was the rhassoul clay powdered or clay pieces?

[faeflame]

@ Faeflame:

I have asthma too and with preparing of ghassoulpowder and cassiatreatments I always suffered from inhaling little particles of the powder that led to breathing problems.

I have solved this problem by going to a DIY-store and buy one of these "mouthcaps" (don't know the rigth word for it) and whenever I want to prepare ghassoul or cassia I put on this cap and I have no problems whatsoever.


That is a great idea!!

Ps- lovely hair in your siggy!

[Angharad]

Thanks :flower: Faeflame!

[Henna Sooq]

Or you can use rhassoul clay in a shampoo bar you find, or for curly gals, why not mix the rhassoul clay with amla powder as a treatment? it would be less likely to loosen the curls. But with any herbal treatments moiturization is important. they use rhassoul in Morocco (it's from there), and they use argan oil too. So it's a whole process.

[Karala]

Just read the first post, but was the rhassoul clay powdered or clay pieces?

So far I've only used powdered rhassoul clay, but I just got a bag of the little pieces-type for my birthday (yeah, my nieces who are 8 and 10 were slightly bewildered that I got "green rocks" for my birthday, and then even more amused when I explained to them that it was to be mixed with water to make mud that I would wash my hair with) so I'll try that out soon.

[Henna Sooq]

are they really green? I have never seen green rhassoul clay....

[Angharad]

Neither have I; just greyish little claytablets or lightbrown powder.

[Henna Sooq]

green tones, makes me think it's another type of clay. I have a lot of different variations of rhassoul that I've gotten. I got these big huge 1 kg chunks, and they were dark, and hard like mud. Then the clay pieces I've seen, and the powdered, I've seen brown, and beige.

I really suppose the preparation is what affects it but green is really nothing I've ever seen nor heard of. Are you sure it's from Morocco?

[marisa]

Has anyone ever used Bentonite clay?

I have some I use as a face mask, but have heard it's an effective shampoo as well.

I may have to try soon.

[Henna Sooq]

Do a google search as well

This came up for me, and she's a very well known blogger, and has been on TV.
http://www.curlynikki.com/2009/01/nik-bentonite-clay-love-that-dare-not.html

[Karala]

are they really green? I have never seen green rhassoul clay....

Oops, yeah, it's actually rather greyish, I got confused because I also got henna powder (which is definitely green!) and I was so short on sleep yesterday when I wrote about this. Sorry I got you confused.

[Henna Sooq]

lol!! well at least it wasn't something else, like some green clay posing as the rhassoul. Never know sometimes :)

[Angharad]

I told you I only knew brown or greyish ghassoul, but very recently I also used the white ghassoul from Logona (with lotusextracts); this is marvellous stuff also. I use it when I feel like my scalp needs a wash but the rest of my hair still feels o.k.

When I use this and just wash my scalp it is just enough to feel fresh again; the smell is heavenly by the way.

In my opinion it is the most respectful, soft way of washing my hair; I don't even need a conditioner or very, very little afterwards.

[Henna Sooq]

so maybe it is a ghassoul blend. powdered right? Or it could have been bleached.

[Angharad]

I searched and found this site:

http://www.logona.com/Lavaerde/Lava_E/index.html


It is not ghassoul apparently, but white kaolin.

[Henna Sooq]

really interesting! Thanks for sharing

[NaiadOreiad]

Yesterday i bought the logona lavaerde. First in the morning i did a jojoba oiling and put it up. Rode my bicycle to town, bought the ghassoul, hit the gym, the sauna,and then washed with it. OMG amazing. My hair feels so good right now. My fine hair is typically weighed down by organic products but this is perfect. Now to find some argan. It got a little staticy later in the day but i think a light oiling after wash would help that. Combine ghassoul with the forces of henna and goat's milk shampoo (by helewes on etsy) and a touch of oil, I THINK I HAVE FINALLY ROUNDED OUT THE ELEMENTS OF A VIABLE ROUTINE!!!! I am so happy.

[Angharad]

I am happy for you :) !