How tight are your roots?

The tightly knotted part of most of my locks start less than half an inch from my scalp. I gotta tell ya, when putting my hair up sometimes this can cause some ouchy issues which take a while to work through. My hair tends to fold up as a whole instead of being drawn up like it used to be able to when it was loose and flowing.

I thought natural neglect dreads would have at least an inch of loose hair at the roots?

I can barely wiggle the tip of my pinky finger into the roots of those particular locks, which are all very mature. I guess this is the way it's supposed to be. It's just sort of a pain to wrestle with sometimes.

So how about everyone else? Do you have at least a half an inch between your scalp and locked sections?

Is there any way to loosen them up?

updated by @angel-frye: 01/13/15 09:46:04PM

A half inch is fairly standard for mature dreads. There is no real way to change it, that I know of.

I have some dreads that have an inch or so undreaded at the scalp other dreads want to start knotting closer, about a 1/2 inch. I think because your hair is so curly that it will probably always knot closer to the scalp.

how are u tying them up

when i tye em if 1 is pulling and hurtingi find that 1 and pull it slightly towards my scalp to take rthe unjeven tension off

--
My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1

My more mature locks are about that tight also. I finally had to split a larger dread because any way I tied it back pulled on it too much. It can be painful!

I did have a mess at the roots two weeks ago; I was too lazy to separate properly. Got that taken care of(scissors, no less! It was crazy. Couldn't yank anything out of the locks) but they're still pulling like heck on the scalp. Doing a major cleanup job on my scalp with scissors helped about 10% with the ouchy problem.

I've just been sweeping them back like putting them up in a ponytail. Nothing fancy. And SE, I do find those locks(if it's only one or two) that are especially painful and pull them more toward my scalp. I figured that part out. It's the all-over aggravation, I think, that I can't pull my hair back the way I used to be able to. Granted, I love my hair now. I have thicker hair now and I have way more stuff I can do with it. It's just having to wrangle and wrestle with it in quirky new ways that I am having difficulty with at the moment.

Good to hear that shorter than 1/2 an inch loose roots aren't really abnormal.

Kelsey, I hear what you're saying. I have a few locks that have naturally sectioned themselves in rather horizontal ways on my scalp- they're not nice little chunky squares so the pressure isn't evenly distributed.. When I try to pull my hair back it yanks at that opposing side of the lock and I'm left panting in pain. There's really no way to loosen that up a whole lot without the whole 'do' falling apart. They're right on the upper side/back corners of my head which are the areas that stabilize the hair style.

Taye, I fear you may be right-- curly hair may be making this a bit worse than what it should be. Or, I just have a super duper sensitive scalp.