Since I took the re-tightening class last August, I’ve been practicing on my own head. I typically re-tighten the front of my head and my loctician does the back.

Last month, my loctician went on maternity leave and I had two choices: 1) find someone else to perform my reti or, 2) do it myself. I’ve never counted my sisterlocks, but we’re pretty sure I have 500+, so the thought of re-tightening my whole head is overwhelming, to say the least. Not to mention, I’d never retightened the back of my head because I can’t see back there and it’s daunting.

How so never (LOL), 5 weeks post reti from my loctician, I realized that the back of my head was becoming a forest, so I put on my big girl undies and made the decision to attempt the reti on my own. I began by separating the back from the front and pulling all of the hair up into a high bun. Rather than pulling down an entire row to tighten, I pulled out locs one-by-one. I worked approximately 2 hours the first day. I had to take frequent breaks because my arms hurt. I was getting a good workout in. LOL

Spread across 3 days, it took approximately 6 hours to re-tighten the back of my head. That’s a really rough estimate as I wasn’t timing myself. I accidentally combined two of the locs (sigh), but that’s it! That’s pretty darn amazing in my book. My loctician may be able to pull them apart, but if not, it’s okay.  I noticed that I over-tightened a few locs and I caused a slight amount of pain in my crown area. I’ll have to be careful with that in the future.

Overall, I’d do it again if I have to, but it’s definitely not something I’m looking forward to to doing soon. *side eye*