Sisterlocks in lockdown – 10 ways to help yourself

Here in the UK we’ve been in lockdown since the end of March and we have another few weeks to go of the extended lockdown. And there’s a possibility that it will be extended.

If, like me, you would normally go to a Sisterlocks consultant for every re-tightening, you may well be wondering what to do, especially with all the re-growth.

Perhaps the most trying thing is not knowing when we’ll be able to book in that next re-tightening appointment.

But what can we do?

There are some options.

Firstly

If you have specific concerns about your Sisterlocks, you could call or text your consultant and ask them.

As the person who has spent many hours on your hair and is skilled at what she does, she can give you advice that is tailored specifically to your hair and what you’d like to do.

This is especially important if your Sisterlocks have been recently installed, or if you have particular issues such as slippage or problem areas.

During this time, your consultant may reach out to you to offer advice on how to look after your Sisterlocks until you can attend your next appointment.

Secondly

Helping yourself.

I have been doing all I can to help myself maintain the health of my scalp and Sisterlocks.

Here are the 10 ways I’ve been doing that during the lockdown.

1. Checking each one of my Sisterlocks to see whether there are any weak ones. Some of my hairline ones are fine and I am doing all I can to protect those little babies.  I’ll tell you more towards the end of the video about what I’ve done with those weaker Sisterlocks.
2. Separating the re-growth where the strands are trying to marry up with strands in adjacent Sisterlocks. I’ve been checking my re-growth for those rogue strands every week or two and gently separating them, particularly in areas where there is a lot of re-growth. I have also been lightly oiling my scalp once a week.
3. Tying my hair up – now that my hair has grown a little, I have started to tie up the front when doing sport. If it were longer at the back, I’d tie that up too, to keep it from rubbing against my clothing and gathering fluff or lint.  But other than that, I leave my hair alone and I don’t style it.
4. Reducing the amount of hair washing – I do a lot of sport and until the lockdown, I was a weekly washer.  But I now stretch wash-day to every 2 to 2 and a half weeks, because every time I wash my hair (even when I’m being very careful), there is an amount of extra marrying of the strands.  Plus, frequent washing during this time will put my more fragile locks around my hairline, in very serious jeopardy.
5. Continuing with my active lifestyle – for me this involves cardiovascular exercise (raises the heart rate) around 6 days per week – which puts me in a great mood.  Who can resist the high that exercise can give us?  I know I can’t. An additional benefit of regular exercise, apart from overall health, is that it promotes a strong hair growth cycle – by increasing the blood flow to the scalp – which nourishes the roots of the hair.
6. Continuing to eat healthily – I like to follow a healthy diet because I feel better for it and I know that my Sisterlocks will benefit too. Being at home has provided me with the ideal opportunity to discover different healthy recipes and to try them out for myself.   I switched to a plant-based diet last year and that has been a game-changer for my eating habits.
7. Drinking more water – this one is very much a work in progress for me. Staying hydrated means that my hair and body will benefit, and I’ve been working hard on my water intake.  I stopped buying fruit juice and fizzy drinks about a year ago, but I can’t resist my teas – and my daily coffee!
8. Taking the time to relax more – This is a big one for me.  I’m doing everything to reduce stress and put to one side all the things that I can’t change or that don’t matter.  It’s a work in progress and I’m always on the lookout for ways to achieve this.  As I’m saying this, yoga and meditation come to mind…  And I know that those yoga inverted postures have great health and hair benefits also.
9. Taking time out to smell the roses – the lockdown is providing a great opportunity to slow down the pace of my life. And I’m doing that by going for long, leisurely walks, reading those books that have been gathering dust on the shelves, taking the time, when I go outside, to notice things around me that I may have walked past a hundred times before and never taken any notice of.  This is a great time for reflection and for me to get a bit of perspective on life, what’s important and to be thankful.
10. Reaching out – this has been the perfect time to reach out to more of my friends and family – and especially those who I haven’t spoken to in a while – to find out how they‘re doing. I’ve found that it has helped to get me out of my own head.  What better way to let someone you care about know that you’re really thinking about them than to give them a call and have a conversation with them or a video call?

Other than these things, I have heard of different practices that others are doing with Sisterlocks during these challenging times

And, I’m mentioning them here because they may be options for you, and of course we each are free to do as we see fit with our Sisterlocks – so this is just me listing what I’ve heard.  You may want to do some research of your own.

In no particular order, the options are:

• Plaiting the Sisterlocks and keeping them tied up to help contain any unravelling, slippage or marrying up.

This sounds like a particularly good option, especially if you have longer Sisterlocks, or very dense hair or a huge amount of re-growth.

• Combining Sisterlocks.

There are any number of reasons why this may be an option for you.  Some of the reasons I have heard about are: ** to increase the stability of the individual locs, ** to have larger locs,

**to avoid the burden of re-tightening so many smaller locs.

• Cutting or taking down the Sisterlocks.

I can relate to this as it is something I have done in the past and this is my second set of Sisterlocks.

But I would say that, if you are tempted by this option, please proceed with caution because, once your Sisterlocks have gone, that’s it!

I’ll be going into more details in a forthcoming video about precisely what I did and why I had such a drastic change of heart very soon after taking out and shaving my first set of Sisterlocks.

I have one final point to talk about with you:

Self-re-tightening!

I normally go to my consultant every 7 weeks for my re-tightenings, and until the lockdown began I stuck to that schedule like clockwork.

Last year, I bought a loc tool  – the Easyloc hair tool. The tool is made of plastic, is curved and it has a soft, flexible tip.

I bought it because I thought I might need it in an emergency one day.

And that day came a couple of weeks ago.  I noticed that I had some fragile baby Sisterlocks around my hairline that were in grave danger, and so I decided to re-tighten them with the Easyloc tool

It was fairly easy to use, but, as I used the loc tool, I found that, due to its length, it was too long for the shorter locs and, because I’m not experienced at re-tightening, I ended up hooking in some hair from adjacent locs.  This happened to a couple of the Sisterlocks at the front, and the idea of trying this on the rest of my Sisterlocks using multi-way mirrors to try to work on the locs at the back of my head isn’t something I want to do.

This experience has only served to re-affirm my resolution to keep going to my consultant for all of my re-tightenings!

I think I’ll try to hold on for as long as I possibly can.

(Original post date: 27th April 2020)