How to I do The Banding Method

After doing the Tension Method on my hair I realized that I loved my hair when it is stretched. But because I didn't want to over do it with the heat, I needed to find another way to stretch my hair. I've done so much research on natural hair in general, including stretching methods, and most bloggers recommended Banding as a good, heatless way to stretch natural hair.

Until recently I never thought I cared about stretched hair so I may have seen 1-2 videos on YT on the actual method and it seemed like a lot of work. But after reading tons of articles I've decided to go the Banding route. It seems in my opinion, that the only damage that could occur would be from the actual Banding, using rubber bands or hair ties with the metal connector. I used rubber bands but I didn't put them too tightly on my hair. And I only used rubber bands because I ran out of hair ties, but I made sure to not put them on the scalp only defending towards the end. I also didn't put the bands to close to my ends because that is the oldest part of my hair.

Here is what I did

1.Washed and detangled my hair as usual. Most articles say detangling is only necessary if you plan on doing a style after the banding, otherwise if you will be doing a twist-out or braid out it's not important. I am doing a protective style and really needed my hair to be detangled.

2. Sectioned my hair in small parts so it could dry faster, also while my hair was still wet I applied my Shea Butter Mixture to seal in moisture.

3. Once I had my hair sectioned off I applied Shea Moisture Curl and Style Milk, detangling with my wide tooth comb from tip to root.

4. At the base of my hair I used a regular hair tie, without the metal part, and banded the remainder of my hair with rubber bands. The thing about rubber bands all they WILL take out your hair if you are not careful putting them in and removing them. Don't pull them off in a fast pace because you will suffer the hair breakage that we all worked to hard to get in the first place. I don't recommend using rubber bands because of this very reason, I was in a bind therefore had no choice. But I will be investing in some Goody Ouchless Hair Ties soon.

5. I did steps 1-4 through out my entire head. It took me about an 1 and half to complete.

Yes some of you don't have any time to do this, but I have wanted to try this stretching method versus using heat. I will be featuring more videos and articles regarding various other stretching methods, such as Roller Sets, Plaits, Flexi-Rods, I mean the list goes on and on.

Stretching my hair using the Banding method is here to stay. Pynkstarr