Yahya aka Pocahontas Shares Her Relaxed And Japanese Straightened Hair Journey

If you have relaxed hair, not reading this interview could be considered the ultimate cardinal sin. Yahya aka Pocahontas has hip length relaxed hair that has nothing to do with her genes.

She has been interviewed by blogs dedicated to relaxed hair and she also has her own blog too, check it out here. Yahya now practices Japanese straightening which has replaced traditional relaxers for her and she has found it very beneficial to keeping her hair healthy.

Yahya knows her hair, she knows what it does, she knows how it works, and she can teach you a thing or two as well. We could talk all day about how excellent her interview was, but we will just let you go ahead a read it below.

Yahya, so many women with relaxed hair feel defeated as if they will never get their hair past shoulder length, what is the first step they should take when starting a long healthy hair journey?

The first step would be to find good moisture, protein, and low porosity products. These are the three essentials for relaxed hair. The curlier the hair the dryer it tends to be, so if you relax it doesn’t need all that moisturizing, Wrong! This is a common misconception I see.

The relaxing chemical process takes away moisture due to the protein that is broken down. This is why a good moisture conditioner and leave-in is important.

Protein is important because, like said before, protein in the hair strand is lost after relaxing, relaxed heads need a good protein treatment that will keep filling the lost proteins back in. Lastly, relaxers have a ph of about 9 to 14 when hair’s ph is 5. This gives relaxed heads a naturally higher porosity, but that can easily be normalized with ph correctors.

We hear all the time,that patience is key, How long have you been on your hair journey and how did you resist the urge to do daily length checks and avoid frustration?

I started my hair journey entering high school, so that was about 5-6 years ago. When I first began I only did length checks after relaxer day, which was three to four times a year, so it was easy not to do constant length checks.

Currently I’ve been doing length checks more often as I’ve been testing different growth aids and methods. Honestly, I’ve never had a problem with measuring too often.

I do understand that we get overexcited, but girls that are also aiming to grow and accurately record their hair progress should keep in mind that does not mean you should measure every week …Unless you’re using a growth aid or practice that is suppose to see results in a week. But when I’m not using any growth things, the most often I would see myself measuring is 6 times a year.

There are some relaxer hair myths out there like not wetting your hair often, what is the one of the biggest myths that you have heard and proven wrong?

 I think the biggest was that the GHE method only works because it helps you retain length. I saw two inches of growth after doing the GHE method for a week.

To say that the GHE method only helps retain length is to say that I have an average growth rate of 2 inches a month, and that I always loose about 1 ½ of my normal growth rate.