Essential oils for long hair? You bet!

We can’t claim to cure baldness, but we can say a lot of our friends swear this blend has helped them grow long, lustrous locks.

Try blending these essential oils for long hair in an ounce of jojoba wax or avocado oil. Both are great for nourishing your scalp and protecting your hair. We’re recommending five essential oils for long hair (although there are certainly more to choose from). Stick to about 20 drops of essential oil total.

Geranium

(Pelargonium roseum x asperum)

5 or 6 drops. You’ll adore geranium’s soft rosy aroma. It’s one of our primary ingredients here because it’s known to help balance the skin’s production of sebum—the oil that keeps skin moisturized—while also reducing dryness (and dandruff). People also use it for reducing scar tissue and promoting overall skin health.

Cedarwood

(Cedrus atlantica)

5 or 6 drops. Take a deep breath. . .Can you smell the rosy geranium blended with woody cedar? We promise, it’s lovely! It’s a slightly astringent oil that can help balance scalp health.

Rosemary

(Rosemary ct. camphor)

5 or 6 drops. Rosemary is famous for promoting circulation, which makes it a popular option for massage, including scalp massage, and one of the most well-known essential oils for long hair. This variety of rosemary includes the natural components camphor (great for circulation) and verbenone (known for skin care and skin cell regeneration).

Ylang Ylang

(Cananga odorata)

1 or 2 drops. Ylang ylang has a very potent aroma, and if you use too much it can overwhelm not only the other oils in the blend, but your senses. (You could wind up with a headache!) You’ll see what we mean if you accidentally add too many drops! (If too much ylang ylang gets into your blend, we suggest starting over. Adding more jojoba might make more hair oil than you can use within the shelf lives of the essential oils.)

Jasmine

(Jasminum grandiflorum)

1 or 2 drops. The same basic rules apply to jasmine that we discussed for ylang ylang. But it’s also a little more expensive than some other oils, so less is more here.

 

How to use this blend

Three or four times a week, place a few drops of the blend in your palm and rub it between your hands to warm it. Bend over and let your hair dangle—the idea is to increase blood flow in your head—and massage the oils into your scalp.

Try this a half hour or so before you shower, so the oils have time to absorb and nourish your skin. If you prefer to do it before bed, you may want to wear a shower cap to prevent the oils from getting all over your pillowcases. Then again, the blend does smell lovely, and you might like to drift off to sleep with it!

Want to replace any of the oils above with a substitute? Maybe they’re too expensive, or you don’t have them in your collection? Here are a few substitutes you might want to try:

• Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)
• Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)
• Tangerine (Citrus reticulata)
• Juniper (Juniperus communis)

 

If you make this blend let us know how it goes!

 

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Geranium info.

Rosemary info.

Cedarwood info.

Ylang ylang info.

Jasmine info.

 

In recent years, shea butter’s popularity has exploded.

We’re seeing it in commercial products distributed by franchises like The Body Shop. While we can’t speak as to how refined or unrefined these products are (we prefer it unrefined, to retain all the skin-healing properties of the butter), we have to say we’re thrilled shea’s become such a hot commodity.

The reason being that it’s helping women in Africa make good livings for themselves and their families.

Shea has traditionally been harvested and produced by African women for generations—so much so that it’s earned the nickname "women’s gold." According to the UN Development Program, about 3 million African women are working with shea butter in countries such as Ghana, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo and Benin.

But "women’s gold" or not, shea butter’s profitability has for a long time been limited to local markets. Sometimes the women saw little of the profits, due to bulk traders taking the biggest cut. Sometimes, due to production limitations, small women-run shea businesses have operated with minimal profits, or even at a loss.

With the recent shea butter boom, that’s all changing.

Over the next five years, the shea butter industry is expected to grow by $500 million. With more demand comes higher visibility and public awareness. That means more people are fighting for a fair deal for the women who produce shea.

It’s especially encouraging to see big companies, such as L’Occitane and The Body Shop, taking pride in using fair trade shea butter, even if it means they pay more for it. A recent article in Africa Renewal magazine reports that L’Occitane pays about 20% to 30% more for fair trade shea from Burkina Faso than they would from Western suppliers. "Sales of shea butter to L’Occitane represent about $1.23 million yearly for the supplier cooperatives and their 15,000 rural women members."

There are also more non-profit organizations dedicated to giving African women the tools to run profitable businesses.

SNV, an international non-profit dedicated to elevating people around the world out of poverty and giving them access to basic services (such as clean water), has been particularly helpful.

SNV has helped shea producers brand themselves successfully, with the result that they sell almost everything they bring to market. They’ve helped women-run organizations refine their processes to produce enough shea to sell in bulk to major buyers (shea has traditionally been made by hand in a time-consuming process). But they also teach women to manage the financial aspects of their businesses.

"In Ghana alone, SNV has supported the development of 1,483 community-based Village Saving and Loan Associations. These give their 42,000 members (85% of whom are women) the skills to manage savings, credit and to stockpile produce in order to better control price points."

Do you use shea butter? If so, does understanding its impact on low-income African women make you want to seek out fair trade sources?

 

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Herbs and Spices

You can burn almost any herb or spice for incense. To choose the right ones, just use your nose. (Clove, cinnamon and cardamom are lovely, but unconventional choices like fennel can really spice things up!)

Grind them with a coffee grinder to create a finely ground powder. You can also use a mortar and pestle, or a hand-crank grinder.

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Seeds and Nuts

Choose nuts and seeds that smell delicious when they roast, like almonds or pumpkin seeds. You can use an electric grinder for these, or use your mortar and pestle to break them down, and finish the job with your hand-crank.

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Fruit and Berries

We recommend drying these out first. You can slice fruit and dry it in your oven. Or use a fruit peeler or cheese grater to create small bits of the skin or rind. Orange zest makes a wonderful incense ingredient! After drying fruit slices, grind them up into smaller pieces. If you’re using citrus zest, just let it dry and you’re good to go.

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Gums and Resins

These are some of our favorite incense ingredients! But they can be tricky to work with. Try freezing them first to reduce the gumminess. You don’t want to put these in an electric grinder. Even frozen, they could seriously gum up the works. The best way to do it is also the oldest—with a mortar and pestle. You won’t get a fine grind, but that’s okay. Resins release strong aromas even when burned in larger chunks.

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Wood and Bark

Another tricky one. Use a small hammer and wood chisel on a cutting board to whittle wood down into rice-sized chips. (Tip: It's best if the cutting board isn't made of wood, which might dent or divot under a chisel.) You don’t need to make a powder here, but once your chips are small enough, you can grind them further with a hand-crank or electric grinder. 

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These are just a few popular incense ingredients. You can really use any natural, safe substance that burns. It doesn't even have to produce a pleasant scent, depending on your purposes. (Maybe you want to fumigate your home!) Get creative!

Now go on to learn some loose incense recipes you can make yourself!

 

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