Roots?
Dread Maintenance
um, wow, you want to tighten you roots but wonder why it hurts? have you ever made a pony tail to tight? same thing, dreading to close to the scalp can cause the hairs to pull and be painful, crocheting would just make it worse not to mention the damage it would do as far as weakening the dread at the root which could cause them break off where they were crocheted and may need constant upkeep or it will just undo itself because your not really knotting the loose hair, your just tucking it into the dread, to hide it.hair dreads on it's own anyway, so anything done to "maintain" half the time ends up hampering progress and causes more trouble down the road; all these products and gels and tools and special what evers, it's funny, with straight hair we just comb out the knots ripping the hair out at the root and hurting ourselves as well as our hair, some even use straightening irons and products that damages the hair further just to make it straight, which would say to me that keeping your hair straight is unnatural and is damaging and painful, and really doesn't need to be done but we forge on with relaxers and special shampoo's and who knows what.now with dreads, we let our hair do what it wants, sometimes it gets started with one method or another but the idea is the same, a natural, product free, worry free, healthy lifestyle, which, at least in my experience, makes people with dreads pretty chill, because they've let go of the stresses of vanity and accepted that this is me, naturally, beautifully; when you start getting caught up in the vanity they lose meaning and become a mess of products and stress that ends up with a shaved head or a bad attitude from all the constant worry and focus placed on how your dreads look and then when you ask for help you can't accept that something might fix itself over time so your left constantly looking to find out how to fix something that isn't broke and regret your dreads because you backcombed and person a has better looking dreads because they crochet and person b has great dreads because they went natural and person c yadda yadda yadda, it's just a big circle or regret over something that should be a happy, positive experience.and even though i hate to repeat anything from them regarding dreads, on dhhq's site i found this in the faq's:How do I dread my roots as they grow?You don't, Jah does! But you can help Jah out. (No disrespect to Jah was meant by that comment, Rastafari believe that Jah forms your locks and the shape of your locks is influenced by your personality) The roots are always the last part of the lock to dread. In the first few months all you can really hope for is to keep them looking good. They won't really tighten and start to lock by themselves until the rest of the lock has tightened completely. The roots are, by definition, the point where the hair grows out of the scalp. Since the hair follicle's continue to push the hair out straight and unknotted (the knots don't ever come pushing out of your scalp pre-formed) you'll always have some undreaded or straight hair at the roots. It doesn't seem possible that straight hair held at both ends could lock at all. The hairs that are actually doing the locking are the new baby hairs growing out of the scalp and the ends of the old mature hairs that just fell out but can't go anywhere cause they are being held in place by the rest of the dread.sorry, i don't mean to vent or come off as rude, but man, i don't understand how there can be so much information on why you shouldn't do something, yet people still suggest it
