I’ve been dying my hair with henna regularly for years, but now that I want to grow out my natural hair colour, I’m looking for something else that will give me the benefits of henna, but not the colour. Enter Senna Italica, also known as cassia. It’s supposed to give your hair shine, strength, and body, so I’m going to give it a try today. Let’s see how it works!
Hmm, here are things I learned from using cassia and from long hair forums. Most people underestimate how much to put on the hair AND the amount of rinsing it requires to fully remove the residual powder. It does eventually work itself out if one doesn’t fully rinse, but meanwhile hair can feel dry, be tangle prone and not have much shine. Many women will take a bucket of water and swish their hair in it changing the water several times, haha. Most also recommend using fresh powder from a reputable source like mehandi .com (or when inspecting the product make sure it looks fresh ie. bright green and has a fresh herbal scent) because there are a lot of old, adulterated and suspect mixes on the market.
I usually use the dying method meaning I mix it with lemon juice and keep it on for 12 hours ( :-O haha, I know)–it seems to “stick” to the hair better with this method–but it’s worth it because it makes my thick(as in lots of them) yet fine, long hair have more substance, weight, and makes it less tangly. Oh, btw, cassia may alter the colour of very light blond hair subtly: and white hair will turn golden (I’m not sure if that would happen doing it with water for on hour or so like you did for conditioning benefits, probably not). I remember one natural blonde not be too pleased with the effect, haha.
Hope I didn’t come off as some know-it-all, haha, not my intention at all.
I mean “I learned from my own experience and long hair forums”, something ate up that part, haha.
Thanks for sharing your experiences! If I try it again I’ll definitely look for a good quality pure cassia. Washing it out with shampoo worked quite well, although my water did turn yellow for the next couple of washes. That happens when I henna too though (just red) so I guess that’s normal.
Major throwback-feeling to your first henna video. Good old times :)
And it looks soooooo shiny :o
Would this treatment work on any haircolour? I already have naturally blond hair and normal henna gave me tomato-red/carrot coloured hair…
Yes! Pure cassia doesn’t give off any colour, just a slightly yellow-ish shine so it’s perfect for blonde hair :)