Detangling: Part 2-the denman brush

Image of a gorgeous woman with a beautiful fro

Hello there lovely people,

So I think that one of the most daunting task that a natural faces is the detangling process.  I gave you all a few tips before about detangling in the post Detangling: part 1, now I wanted to give a few more tips and do a tool review of the Denman brush.  So, first off, my detangling routine:
I typically detangle my hair 1 or 2 times per week.  To detangle I:

1. Separate my hair into 4 sections-I work with one section at a time and then repeat the process until all sections have been detangled
2. I thoroughly wet the section, first I just let the water run through my hair under the shower and then I fluff my hair under the water to make sure that it is good and wet. 
3. I then put conditioner on the section
4. I take a section of the section (I usually end up making three sections within each section-so 12 sections total) and further wet it
5. I put more conditioner on the new sub-section and begin detangling
6. To detangle I use a Denman brush (more on this brush later).  I begin at the ends of my hair and work my way up to my roots.  I hold my hair about an inch above where I am detangling.  Once the area below my fingers can easily be brushed through I move up my hair an inch until I can brush the section from root to tip.  If I encounter a tangle along the way I add more conditioner and slowly brush it out. 
7. Once I have finished detangling a section I twist it and move on to the next section. 
8. After I have detangled the entire hair I usually go back and put a little extra conditioner on the ends of my twists and then typically proceed with deep conditioning. 
9. After I have detangled my hair, I rinse my hair still twisted to minimize re-tangling. 

A few tips that have really helped me with detangling are

• Be patient!!!
• Be gentle with your hair
• Only detangle when your hair is covered in conditioner-you can't put too much conditioner on in my opinion for detangling
• If you have a tangle or knot that you really need to work through, try wetting your hair after you put conditioner on, this will give your hair more slip and help with the process.  If you still have trouble add more conditioner and detangle under running water.  I know it seems like this would only wash all the conditioner out, but it really does help. 

Okay, the Denman brush
So, in my reading of blogs and watching youtube videos and such, I have seen lot of women raving about this Denman brush.  My first instinct was these chicks are nuts.  How can a brush be a good tool to use on curly, kinky, highly textured hair :-/  However, my idol, MTM also raved about this brush, so I decided to give it a try.  I ordered one off of Amazon, and then tried it a few days after it arrived.  OH MY GOODNESS.  This brush is AMAZING.  It's crazy how well it separates your curls while still being gentle.  It is awesome for distributing product (ie. leave-in, moisturizer, conditioner...) through your hair.  Also, it is very good at smoothing the hair.  After I detangle a section I can go through and brush it from root to tip with the Denman brush and it feels like silk all the way down.  I absolutely adore this brush.  I'm trying to explore how else it may be used (ie. for a wash and go).  So, me being me, I ended up ordering the wrong brush and this is actually not the Denman made for detangling and it still does an AWESOME job.  I HIGHLY recommend this bush.  Now you all know I must like it, because I haven't used this many capital letters in a post since I wrote about my freebie :-)  One word of caution, if you do detangle with the denman brush be sure to work in small sections (I'd say about one third of what you usually detangle at once).  Since you will be working with smaller sections you may want to devote more time to detangling and do it out of the shower if your hair is super thick and/or long.  I still detangle in the shower and the process isn't too long to make me not....so just play around with it and see. 

Anyhoo, that's all I have today about that.  Please feel free to post any additional tips for detangling in the comments section.  Also, if anyone in the Columbia area would like to try my Denman before purchase let me know (it is a tad expensive for a brush ~$12, but so worth it!!!)

Tootles for now