Everyone comes upto to and says, "Your hair is so pretty, I wish I had it." Those with curly hair can relate to this statement like nobody else. While you love those natural locks of yours, maintaining it could be very difficult. Curly hair is a lot more prone to frizz, tangles and the damage caused by straightening. And shampooing will ensure your hair gets compared to Shepherd Dog's fur.

Everything from oiling, detangling, sleeping, washing, combing, and the look on the salon guy's face when you go for a cut is too much to handle. However, it seems we have been treating our curly hair in the wrong way all our lives. Katrina Kaif in Bharat, Sonam Kapoor in The Zoya Factor: Bollywood Actresses Who Ditched Their Sleek Straight Hair and Owned Curls.

Thanks to the rise of curly hair bloggers, a whole new method of hair care called Curly Girl Method (CGM) has become popular among people with curls.

The term and method were introduced in 2001 by Lorraine Massey in her book 'Curly Girl: The Handbook'. While the first step to embracing your curls is accepting it the way it is, there are a set of steps that will ensure you have manageable and less frizzy hair days.

Here are six steps to maintain your curly hair

1. Don't comb your dry hair!

YES! It may be against all your traditional hair care methods passed on to by your parents and grandparents, but you are not allowed to comb your hair while it is dry. To detangle, you should try and comb your wet hair after applying conditioner while in the bath. Combing dry curly hair leads to breakage and split ends. You can thank combing for the unhealthy, dry and split hair end of yours.

2. Use chemical free conditioners

Not at all conditioners are meant for curly hair. Ensure your conditioners are free from Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS), Paraben, Mineral oil, drying alcohols, Sodium Chloride, Formaldehyde, etc. Presence of these elements in your conditioner makes your hair frizzy or rather make no difference to unruly hair. While it might look like quite a task to read the ingredients, the dire effects of these conditioners are severe and result in the build-up on your hair. There are plenty of chemical-free conditioners catering to curly hair today in the market.

3. Scrunching your hair and SOTC

While you may have curly hair, the locks may not be defined and coupled with frizz, you may have terrible hair days. Scrunching is a very important element in taking care of curly hair to get proper ringlets. You may look at celebrities' hair and wonder how they got each curl to perfection and yet looks completely natural, it is scrunching that should be credited.

Scrunching your hair ensure you get well-defined ones. For those applying gel after conditioning, a cast is generally formed make your hair look stiff, and the only one remedy to it is Scrunch Out The Crunch (SOTC). After your hair is completely dry, scrunch it again properly and you will see how your hair gains volume.

4. You towel matters

Drying your hair with regular towels can make your hair frizzy. The Holy Grail of drying curly hair is using a T-shirt! After washing, wrap aT-shirt around your head and keep it for some 15-20 minutes. Let it air dry or you can use a diffuser. Other than T-shirts, towel made of microfiber can also be used.

5. Refresh and co-washing

Does your hair behave the best on wash days? You need not wash your hair every day for best hair days. Instead drench it completely in water, apply conditioner and coat with a little gel. And you neither have to wash away the conditioner. You can also co-wash by washing your hair only with the conditioner.

6. Sleeping

Don't leave your hair open while sleeping. Use a satin pillow, satin scarf or a bonnet to wrap your hair while sleeping. Other fabrics generally take away moisture from your hair making it frizzy. You can also tie your hair into a pineapple bun before sleeping. And wake up to a Good Hair Day!

These are some of the basic steps that will reduce your time spent managing your hair. It may not give instant results and you may want to wait for more than two months too see your hair responding to this new treatment. The simple reason is it has been treated in a particular way for a long time and damaged. So recovering may take time but it will. Stay true to the new method and don't let it go because you didn't see results at the earliest. We hope you have the best of the curls in the world!

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 13, 2019 09:30 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).