Can You Work as a Loctician Without Pain in Your Body?

Can You Work as a Loctician Without Pain in Your Body?

I was sitting doing curly braids the other day, when a thought I've been circling for a while finally settled into words.

I've been getting messages lately from locticians all over the world. Different countries, different stages of their careers, but often the same undertone underneath the question they're actually asking — a kind of quiet loneliness, as if they're the only one wondering whether there's a different way to do this work. As if the way things are is simply the way things have to be.

So I want to talk about something today that I don't think gets talked about nearly enough in our industry.

Can you work as a loctician without being in pain?

The Culture of Bleeding Hands

If you spend any time in loctician spaces online, you'll see it. Photos of hands with tape wrapped around cracked, bleeding fingers. Captioned like a badge of honor. Proof that the work was real, that the hours were long, that the dedication was there.

Nobody talks about what's actually happening to our bodies while we work.

I understand the impulse. I carried it myself for years. There's something in this industry that makes pain feel like proof of commitment. But I want to say clearly — bleeding hands are not a sign of dedication. They're a sign that something in the technique needs to change.

Where I Started

I've been a loctician for over 26 years now. In the early years, I was working five to six days a week, some days eight hours, some days twelve, doing exactly what I'd been taught, the way everyone around me seemed to be doing it.

I remember finishing full days and just wanting to lie flat on the floor. Pain in my body. A strange numbness in my fingers that would linger long after I'd put the crochet hook down. I'd go to bed genuinely unsure whether I'd be able to perform at the same quality the next day. And the day after that. And the one after that.

There was a stretch where I seriously considered quitting. Not because I didn't love the work — I did — but because I couldn't see how a body could keep doing this, day after day, year after year, without eventually breaking.

The Turning Point

Instead of walking away, I did something else. I started questioning everything.

How was I standing? How was I holding the crochet hook? How was I positioning my hands in relation to my client's head? How was I moving my client throughout the day — could I shift them, could I sit down for parts of the work, could I change the angle so my neck and shoulders weren't carrying strain they didn't need to carry?

I went through every part of the process, piece by piece, over the course of about a year or two. Adjusting. Testing. Paying attention to what my body was telling me instead of pushing through it.

What Changed

The pain started to ease. That much I expected.

What I didn't expect was what happened to the hair.

The locs I was making began to mature faster. They looked good from day one — not the kind of result where I had to tell a client, "give it three to six months and it'll settle into itself." They could see it in the mirror immediately. I could see it too, in their eyes, in that moment of recognition.

Clients stopped mentioning pain in their scalp. The work itself moved faster. And as I kept refining — my posture, my technique, my own mindset toward the work — I realized that every part of this was connected. The way I cared for my body was showing up directly in the quality and comfort of what I was creating for my clients.

Why This Matters More Than We Admit

Here's the thing I most want other locticians to sit with. Your body is the tool. There is no separating the two.

Repetitive movement — the same motion of the hand, back and forth, hour after hour — creates strain. Left unaddressed, that strain doesn't just cause discomfort. It's often the actual reason locticians leave this profession within two or three years. Not because they stopped loving the work, but because their body couldn't sustain the way they were doing it.

This is the question I think every loctician, and every loctician teacher, needs to be asking. Not just how do we make a dreadlock — but how do we make a dreadlock in a way that lets us do this for decades, not years?

This is where the Seienstyle process came from. Not from a single idea, but from years of tweaking every detail of how I worked until my body could hold the pace of a real, long career. It's a holistic system — for creating, maintaining, and extending locs — but the foundation of it was never just technique. It was sustainability.

A Word to the Industry

I don't say any of this to glorify the profession, and I'm not interested in making it sound harder than it needs to be. But it does take real courage to become a loctician, and it takes even more to stay one.

I wish this were spoken about earlier — from the very first day someone picks up a crochet hook and practices on a mannequin head. I teach my students to treat that mannequin as if it were a real person from day one — head at the right height, not tilted, positioned the way you'd actually work with a client — because the habits you build in year one are the ones you'll be carrying, for better or worse, in year twenty.

If you're new to this work, or if you've been doing it for ten years and something in this is resonating with you, I want you to know this is allowed to be part of the conversation. Caring for your own body isn't separate from caring for your craft. It is the craft.

If This Resonates

I'm always open to hearing from other locticians about this — where you're at, what you've noticed in your own body, whether any of this rings true for you. And if you're curious about the Seienstyle process or the way I teach, you're welcome to reach out. I always want to make sure it's a genuine fit before anything else.

Sending you all my love.

With love, Ann-Marie