Rosemary Decoction

I’m taking an online herbal course for doulas and midwives through BirthArts.net. I decided the other day that for one of my assignments, I’d try a rosemary decoction for a hair rinse. I’m using rosemary because I’ve got fairly dark hair. I’m hoping for a few things from this – that it’ll strip some of that left-over “wash-out” color that’s there, and that it’ll help with the grease that seems to plague me this time of year. As I go more into the course, I’ll be sharing some of my other assignments that are specifically for the childbearing year.

I started out by going into my garden and gathering some rosemary. I needed four tablespoons worth of rosemary for the two cups of water I was going to use – two tablespoons for each cup. Here’s my rosemary. (The extra that I gathered went for chicken at dinner!)

I put a pot on with the water and measured out my rosemary. Once it was starting to boil, I turned it down to simmer. The rosemary needed to simmer for twenty minutes.

Here’s the rosemary after just a couple of minutes.

Here it is after about ten minutes.

(I did dishes while it simmered…little man was napping and I was taking all my opportunities to get stuff done!)

After it simmered, I strained off the rosemary and had just my decoction. I used this measuring cup because it was what was handy to run down the hall with to get a quick shower.

I didn’t let it cool very much, which I certainly will the next time. I usually take a shower in the evening, so next time I plan to make the decoction in the morning and let it sit.

For my shower, I decided it would do me no good to use my regular shampoo and conditioner with the rinse. I grabbed some of my son’s shampoo instead, which is the BEST stuff for little ones. We have used California Baby’s Sensitive shampoo and bodywash for him since he had a bad outbreak of eczema. He hasn’t had an issue since. (For the record, before we switched, we had used Burt’s Bees which is great, but has scents in it like everything else. The stuff from California Baby is totally unscented and awesome – and I have absolutely no affiliation with them)

After I used the shampoo, I rinsed with the rosemary decoction. I could have gotten by with just a cup, especially since my hair is currently really short (thank you bad hairdresser!). I let my hair dry naturally, because that’s what I always do.

This is a bad picture of my hair before the shower and rinse.

This is my hair as it was almost drying, before I did anything to it.

This is after quickly running a straightener through it. There’s no product in my hair. It’s the softest it has ever been. Awesome. I also fixed up my bangs a bit.