Ayurvedic Hair Oiling

Oiling the hair is one of the oldest grooming habits in South Asian homes, handed down from grandmother to grandchild. Champi, from the same Hindi root as the English word shampoo, is a slow head massage with warm oil, given on a Sunday morning or the night before hair wash day. This page gathers the oils families use for it: coconut, almond, castor, sesame and mustard oil labelled for external use.

Each region has its favourite. Kerala and Sri Lankan households reach for coconut oil, Punjabi and Bengali homes for mustard oil, and Tamil homes for sesame. In Tamil Nadu the Saturday oil bath, ennai kuliyal, is a weekly ritual: warm sesame oil is rubbed into the hair and over the body, left for half an hour or so, then washed off with shikakai or a mild shampoo and warm water. Almond oil is light and spreads easily, while castor oil is thick, so many people stir a spoon of it into a thinner oil. Our hair oils shelf holds blended and scented oils as well.

The mustard oils and castor oils on this page are sold for external use on the hair and body only. They are not for cooking, even when the bottle looks like a kitchen oil. Coconut and sesame are also cooking oils, and the edible bottles sit in coconut oil and gingelly and sesame oil, with oils for a full massage in body massage oils.

To warm oil safely, stand a small steel bowl of it in a larger bowl of hot water for a few minutes, then test a drop on the inside of your wrist. Part the hair into sections, work the oil into the scalp with your fingertips, then down the lengths. Leave it in for an hour, or overnight with an old towel over the pillow, and wash it out with two rounds of shampoo. Keep bottles capped and out of sunlight; coconut oil sets solid in a cold British winter and melts again when the bottle stands in warm water.