On Detangling

One of the most useful things I have learned about caring for naturally curly hair is detangling. I always cringed at getting my hair detangled because it hurt like hell. Grant it, my mother used a wide-tooth comb but she combed my hair dry and pulled it out from root to tip! One day when taking out my box braids I took the red wide-tooth comb and started doing it myself. Unconsciously, I started detangling from the bottom and worked my way up and realized it worked better. Grant it, I was still dry combing but I felt like I discovered something amazing and refused to let my mother comb my hair after that.
Knowing what I do now, detangling is much more of an intricate process for me than just using a comb. Here is what I do, usually in the shower:

1. My hair is usually separated into four braided sections. I saturate my hair with water and then unbraid the section I want to work on.
2. Once the section is unbraided, I use my fingers to detangle my hair under the shower stream.
3. After finger detangling, I load up on conditioner that I deem to have a lot slip to the section. I take my wide tooth comb and start combing from the tip to the roots. If the conditioner is really good, my comb usually glides right through my hair. Using my fingers first also helps the use of the comb.

4. I then use my denman brush to smooth out the rest of the tangles. I know a lot of naturals are meh to the denman because they feel it pulls out their hair, but this really works for me.

5. I then either braid the section I was working on or clip it up, and then work on the remaining sections.

This process does take me a while, because I try to be gentle and not whiz through it. I estimate about half and hour! But detangled hair is soo crucial for however you are going to style it, I learned that recently. I actually adopted this routine from my favorite youtube natural, Kim Love from kimmaytube. You can view the specific video here. I'm going to try and do my own "pictorial" of how I detangle for all to see.