I’ve been excited to update you on the progress of the tress-tinkering that I’ve been doing!

When we last met, I had just mixed up the henna portion (15g of dry powder for 1 root application) of my dye and left it to oxidize overnight. The next evening, I added my indigo powder (also mixed with the warm sage tea and a bit of salt to help with dye release) and let that sit for 15 minutes to release. This is what I ended up with:

After it had sat a little while it was even bluer than this! So pretty. Makes me want to re-think my logo…

Anyway!  This was the first time that I had applied my own henna and I wanted to do it in front of the mirror, so I decided to go with the squeeze-bottle applicator route. And boy was I glad for it! Virtually mess-free, yay!

I suppose I should mention that before I started mixing my indigo, I took a shower and shampooed my hair followed by a club soda rinse. Here’s a picture of the before application clean hair:

and after I put the goo on my roots:

I let this sit over night (beneath a layer of plastic wrap and a shower cap) and rinsed it out in the morning, using only conditioner to loosen the mud. I read that you’re not supposed to use a cleanser until the final color is reached (after 2-4 days of oxidization), so I waited until Sunday night to use shampoo, but I did wash it every day with water and club soda or baking soda.

SO here’s the final result!

As you can see (kindof),

the roots are MUCH closer to the color of the ends. There’s still a redder tone to them, but the color is more even over all. (sorry about the blurry photo!!)

I think from here my plan is to do one more application exactly like this, and then follow it up with a fun tinted gloss. I’ll keep you posted! In the meantime, I’m enjoying a much more evenly colored, shiny and soft head of hair! And I’ve gotten so many compliments! Yay!

As you may recall, I mentioned wanting to nail down a consistent realistic hair color ritual involving henna. Eventually (and as I learn more about herbal hair treatments) I would like to expand on my herbal hair treatments to focus on growth, strength, and overall health of my hair. BUT for now, I’ve got to get to the point where my haircare routine is at least keeping my color consistent.

WELL I really want to get the ball rolling and recently ordered some supplies from Henna Sooq (don’t worry, mom, I’m going to need to put in another order with your stuff anyway ^.^) **  I thought I would post a quick note on what I’ve decided to try to get my color a little more even.

Here’s  a picture of my hair currently:

Not the greatest picture perhaps, but you can still see how the top of my hair is pretty ashy and much lighter than the brown color of the bottom. I have a feeling that if it wasn’t for the forgiving nature of natural hair color, I’d have a much more obvious color problem on my hands.

So here’s what I’m going to do. As per this post, I’m going to mix about 100g total of dried herb powder. And as per this one I’m going with an 15/85 ratio of henna/indigo.

I made a bunch of the sage tea that is mentioned in the post on color and mixed up my paste to let the dye start to release overnight. I’d like to look more into what sage is used for as a hair care supplement, so I’ll post any findings on that as they come up. For now, here’s what I ended up with!

More to come!

Now I’m certainly no expert (in fact, I’m still experimenting with my perfect color/frequency regimen myself) so for those of you who are the learn-while-doing type (like I am), you can follow along with me in the next few months as I tinker with my hair color and try to get some kind of semi-easy routine going. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I’d like to try doing a few applictions within a week or two to even out my hair color. Then, hopefully I’ll have a color that I’d like to maintain and I can try to keep to at least one application per month.

I’ve been using henna and indigo on my hair for at least a year now and I have really noticed an improvement on the overall health and shine of my hair, but I haven’t kept on top of the color, and I think I’d like to change it a bit to see what happens. I’m going to do a bit of research over at Henna Sooq and Henna Caravan to weigh my options. I’ll report back with what I come up with! More specifically, I’m going to refer to this post on color:

Here are a couple of links to previous natural hair care posts:

Soapnut Hair Treatment

The ExpHAIRiment

Also be sure you’re following me on Facebook to hear about upcoming events and all of the finer (or funner) details on upcoming events and my NEW MASSAGE SPACE!!!

First of all, I’d like to say a huge THANK YOU for those that participated in Nurture Me November with me! It was so motivating and inspiring to have all of you tweeting and sharing your small self-love rituals with everyone! I think we shall make a more regular habit of this.

BUT that’s not why I’m posting! I’ve got some very exciting news! In addition to a couple of collaborative workshop ideas that I’m working on with a very talented friend and her organization(details coming soon!), I have been a busy bee setting up my VERY OWN new Massage Therapy space!!! Okay okay, it’s not *just* mine, but I couldn’t be happier about sharing this new sacred space with my good friend and colleague, Jade of Djedu Massage. We’ve spent the weekend painting and getting everything ready to start taking clients at the end of this week! Just a few finishing touches left to put in the room!!!

We’re calling the space Bija Bhoga, which is Sanskrit for “the source of sensory enjoyment”. Which is exactly what we’re hoping it will be for our clients. A place where they can come and indulge their senses.

SO

If you’re interested in booking a Massage in the not-so-distant future, our new address is 1700 S 24th, Lincoln, NE. You can call me at 402.613.2428 to book, or send me an email!

I’ll most likely be running a special in March, so stay tuned for that too!

So today, while in the bath with my sore muscle salt soak, I pondered this Nurture-Me-November thing a little more. It’s amazing to me how motivated I’ve been to find little things to tweet about or take a quick photo of. (side note: having a super fancypants smartphone REALLY has done wonders for my motivation as well).  When I decided to make November a month to nurture myself, I didn’t really think about how many other people would get behind the idea. I must say, the feedback so far has been really exciting! I’ve been trying to post to Facebook here and there, but mostly I’ve been using Twitter (#nurturemenov) to share my little moments of self-care.  I’ve been playing with Instagram and having oodles of fun tweeting things like this:

by the way, if you want to follow me on Instagram, search for Knacknack- but I warn you, I post many pictures of food and kittens.

As fun as this has been so far, I’m finding myself hoping that I don’t lose steam. I’m sure I’ll have a busy day here and there this month where I won’t be bombarding the interwebs with whatever silly girly things I may be doing, so I’m trying to come up with a few ways to keep myself motivated…

Getting the feedback for N.M.N. that I’ve received so far has been SO encouraging and SO exciting. I just want to keep hearing about all of the little things that you guys are doing for yourselves too! So I thought to myself: “how can I get people to share/tweet more?”

duy. A giveaway. What else motivates people like free stuff? Not much.

But what to give away??? Well, thanks to the lovely ladies over at Henna Caravan and their awesome Golden Elephant Gift Exchange, I’m going to be putting together a fantastic little box of goodies! I won’t say specifically what’s going to be in it, but it might have something to do with chocolate… and henna… and maybe some other pampering goodies also… So I thought, HEY! I’ll just make two and give the extra one to the winner!!

Awesome, right?! so here are the rules: Read my mini-soapbox-babble about Nurture Me November and learn a bit about why I’m doing this, then tweet your own recipes/ideas/thoughts/feelings/moments (really, this could be just about anything so long as it makes you feel good about yourself) with the tag #nurturemenov, and at the end of November, I’ll draw a winner. Every time you tweet, you get an entry. Did you spend time smelling the roses? Tweet it. Delicious, nutritious dinner? Tweet it. Did you power through your to-do list with time to spare? Tweet it. Like I said, NMN is about building awareness of the things that you already do, not making a bunch of added effort to do new things. The more we share; the more we encourage each other. And the more we encourage each other; the more we encourage ourselves. And the more we’re encouraged; the more likely we are to spend our time doing things that help us cultivate the people that we truly want to be.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve prepared a lovely bedroom to sleep in.

What this means is that all month long I’m making an extra effort to do simple little things that nurture a part of myself that I want to thrive. Whether its my motherly side, my spiritual self, or my inner crafting genius; I’m going to be taking time and making notes to build my awareness and encourage making a habit out of a few of these little “extras”.
For example:
I’m going to try to make it to one yoga class every week this month. I’m also going to re-acquaint myself with my diet and look into ways of boosting metabolism and breaking my plateau. I’m going to do a little something extra with my appearance every day (earrings, lipstick, curly hair, favorite shoes, etc.). I’m going to keep myself freshly henna’d. More bubble baths. More singing out loud. More crafting. You catch my drift.

I’m going to do these things, and perhaps more importantly, I’m going to take a moment to reflect on them as I’m doing them. Why am I doing it? What part of myself am I satisfying by doing it?

One of the other good habits I’m trying to build on is blogging/tweeting/facebooking/etc more. So I’ll be sharing my thoughts and reflections via Facebook and twitter! Like Hannaya Healing on Facebook, follow @hannayahealing (#nurturemenov) on twitter, and check the blog for updates.

Join me and share the little ways that you’re nurturing yourself all month long! What better way to cultivate self appreciation and gratitude during a season of thanks?

When last we met, I had expressed curiosity about the Soapnut Hair treatment. Since then, my supplies from Henna Sooq arrived, which happened to include said soapnuts! I followed their directions for the 100g package and got about a half gallon of the liquid.  I then pranced merrily to the food processor to whip up some lovely foam! After that, it was off to the shower where with this foam- and only this foam- I’d make my hair so silky and shiny I couldn’t believe it!

After doing a bit more research, I learned that you can use the liquid only as a shampoo, and you can use the nuts themselves for a variety of different things. Check out this link! Neat!

Of course, the soapnut treatment was also a cleansing prep before my next henna/indigo hair dye application. I used the same ratio of indigo to henna, but added some amla powder this time for cooler tones, shine, and curl. I’ll post photos soon before it changes too much, but it came out nearly black! I’m sure it will lighten as I wash it, but so far I absolutely love it!

The above photos were from a henna party that I did last week for a friend. It was oodles of fun and I didn’t even get to henna everybody there! I can’t wait for my next one.

I also can’t wait for this Saturday! I’ll be hosting a Henna Workshop at 9 Muses Studio from 1-3! I’ve never hosted a workshop before, and I don’t know that I’ll be the most scholarly instructor since I’m still learning so much about henna and the arts and culture that surrounds it, but I figure this will be a great way to jump in and share what I *do* know with people! Very exciting.

Currently I’m working on a handout and some other materials for the class. I plan on touching on some of henna’s history as well as come of the meaning in symbols from various cultures. Honestly, narrowing down the subject matter for the class is going to be tricky for me. As I’ve been gathering my sources and compiling all of this wonderful info, I just keep finding more and more fascinating info. Somehow I always seem to fall in love with such expansive topics with so many different facets!

Lately I’ve been curious about ways to really indulge my hair. A while ago I started using henna and indigo to color my hair. While I am quite happy with the results so far, I’m still craving some kind of deep cleanse/condition ritual that will help my hair feel silky, or help with volume and curl, etc. Since I’ve started using henna on my hair, it’s gone from dry to greasy and oily, back to dry….. I think it’s started to level out (I also think I need to try a new shampoo). I also feel like I’m shedding quite a bit of it since, but that may also just be that it’s darker, and getting longer, too.

So here I am, considering a little pampering hair ritual and I thought I would just ask you guys! What do you do to condition/pamper your hair? Oils? Masks? Home-made conditioner? Mayo? What?  Also: Has anyone out there ever used Soapnuts? I’m thinking about trying them out before I dye my hair next (which should be soon). Here’s a video from HennaSooq (who just redid their website, btw. I haven’t gotten to spend much time there yet- but I totally love it so far!) Let me know what you think!

This evening I needed to mix up some fresh paste for a few future appointments. Lately I’ve been trying to mix smaller batches at a time. So far, I enjoy doing this more than mixing a larger batch and freezing it. I don’t know that the quality of the paste is much different either way, but I do enjoy the experience of mixing henna so having to do it more often is definitely a good thing.

While I was mixing and measuring this evening, I was really thinking about the experience I was having. One of my favorite parts of Loretta Roome’s Mehndi is where she talks about mixing paste. She talks about the hands that harvested, dried, ground, and sifted the henna leaves; and about the thousands of years of tradition and culture that used this very same powder for so many rich celebrations and rituals. Women in so many different cultures and time periods have used henna as a form of self expression, adornment, and even meditation. I’ll have to post a few really great quotes later, but Roome suggests that every step of the henna and mehndi process is an opportunity for meditation. A chance for the hannaya to honor, participate, and share something bigger than herself and the paste she paints with.

I was in massage school when I read that for the first time and it really amazed me at how similar this idea was to setting a healing, nurturing tone/energy/intention for a massage treatment. Since I made this connection, I’ve tried to create a little ritual every time I mix my paste. I put on some music and use my “henna” spoon and while I’m measuring and mixing until my arm hurts, I think about the people I might get to decorate, and the way I hope their henna will make them feel. I think about different designs that I want to do and which elements to incorporate into them.

By the time I have a silky smooth henna paste, it becomes very apparent to me that henna is truly, truly therapeutic. Whether its the soothing effects of the lavender essential oils, the deep earthy green color of the paste, the music, thoughts about tradition and history, meditation, prayer, or simply daydreaming- I feel content and happy with the experience I’ve had, and I’m excited and inspired for the experiences that I’ve yet to have with my fresh new paste.

I also love my new henna paste. Yesterday my shipment of the 2011 summer crop of Jamila powder came in from Henna Sooq. I mixed some up right away so that i could use it this morning. NO CLOGS! I always forget how smooth and easy good paste just flows. It might as well just do everything itself! I can’t wait to see how dark these stains get… and of course, fresh henna just smells SOOOO good.

Here are a few of photos from my past couple of private appointments.

One of the foot designs that I did for my first private client at Yoga Body & Balance. I’m hoping she’s a return customer. She’s oodles of fun to work on. I can’t wait to do some henna for her with my new Jamila paste. The paste used here was what I got at the local Arabic grocery, which clogged *constantly*. But the color looked lovely, so it wasn’t a total bust.

Both feet! We were going for symmetry… not too bad!

One of the hand pieces that I did yesterday morning. Again, such a lovely lady to work with! And I couldn’t have been happier about the way my paste turned out. Such great detail! yay!

And a peacock on the other hand! Love it Love it!