How to Avoid Pain as a Loctician: Working Smarter So Your Body Lasts

By Ann-Marie Christell, Seienstyle

A conversation we need to have

My name is Ann-Marie Christell, and I have been a professional loctician for over 26 years. Not long ago, I was sitting with a client, braiding curly extensions into her hair, and my mind drifted to some messages I have been receiving from locticians around the world.

It struck me how few people in our profession are thinking about this topic. Or if they are, they believe they are alone with it, and that there is no other way to work.

The topic is this. If you want to last as a loctician, you need to work in a smarter way. Your body depends on it.

Bleeding hands are not a badge of honour

All over social media, I see locticians sharing photos of their bleeding fingers after a day of crocheting dreadlocks. Fingers wrapped in tape so they can keep going. It has almost become a sign that you are serious about the work.

What is rarely talked about is what is actually happening inside our bodies while we work.

I want to raise this question because for many years, I worked in a way that was slowly destroying my own body. And I do not want that for you.

My own years of pain

For most of my 26 years as a loctician, I worked five or six days a week. Some days were eight hours. Some were twelve, when I had a long session.

In my first years, I honestly believed it was normal to want to cry at the end of a working day. I would finish and want to lie down on the floor. My body ached. My fingers hurt, and sometimes they went numb after a full day of work. I was so exhausted that I had no idea how I would manage the next day.

And underneath the exhaustion was a constant worry. How will I do work of the same high quality tomorrow? And the day after that? And the day after that?

For a long time, I seriously thought about quitting. I started wondering what else I should do with my life.

What I changed

Instead of continuing to work in a way that hurt me, or walking away from the work I loved, I chose a third path. I decided to look closely at everything I was doing.

How was my posture while I worked? How was I holding the crochet hook? How was I holding my hands, my arms, my whole body? How was I working with my client's hair? How was I positioning and moving my client throughout the day?

I went into every detail. And then I started shifting, changing and evolving, one small adjustment at a time.

What happened next

Over the course of one to two years, everything began to change.

I had far less pain in my body. My clients' hair looked so much better. And I realized that the new way I was creating dreadlocks made them mature faster. They looked beautiful from the very first day.

I no longer had to reassure clients in the mirror that their dreadlocks would look amazing in three or six months, once the awkward stage was over. Instead, I could see the glow in their eyes right away. They could feel comfortable with themselves from day one.

My clients also stopped telling me the process was painful. And my work became faster.

This is how the Seienstyle process was born. By tweaking every aspect of how I worked, I have been able to keep doing this work for around sixteen more years. Remember, you only have one body, and that body is the tool that does this work. There are ways to work that cause far less pain. I discovered them, and I know them deep in my own muscle memory.

Why repetitive movement matters

The Seienstyle process is a system for creating, maintaining and extending dreadlocks. Of course it covers the core skills: making new dreadlocks, maintenance, extensions, synthetic dreadlocks, braiding them in. Many locticians teach those skills.

What I want our industry to start talking about is how to do all of this in a holistic way, so you can do this work for decades, not just two or three years before your body forces you to stop.

Here is the key. When you repeat the same movement over and over, moving your hand back and forth for hours, that repetition puts strain on your body. Over time, it can make you physically unwell.

So start to question every movement you make. Ask yourself:

• How am I holding my body, and how am I standing?
• Can I move my client instead of bending myself around them?
• Can I use a chair or stool to release tension, and do parts of the work sitting down?
• How am I holding my hands toward my client's head? Am I making awkward movements that create strain somewhere else?

These questions may seem small. Over a career, they make all the difference.

Start from day one

Holistic, ergonomic work does not begin when you get your first paying client. It begins the very first time you sit down to practice.

I teach my students to treat their mannequin heads as if they were real people. Set the head at the height a real client would sit. Keep it straight, not tilted at awkward angles, because you would never twist a real client's head that way. Instead, you adapt how you work around the head, and you do it ergonomically.

When you train like this from the start, you build a habit of constant awareness. How am I standing? How am I holding my hands? How am I moving my body?

If you keep tipping forward and tensing up, it will cause pain. If you are always straining, the work takes far more energy than it needs to. All of this is worth questioning, whether you are just beginning or have been a loctician for ten years with a thriving career. It is never too late to change how you work.

More than a technique

I want us to change the culture in our profession. It is not cool to have bleeding hands. It is not cool to be in pain after a full day of work. It is not cool to become ill because of the work we love.

My wish is for every loctician to find a way of working that cares for their body. A technique that is more ergonomic, more holistic, and helps them last much longer, and that is gentler for their clients too. I want new locticians to understand that we have to value ourselves and care for ourselves. Sadly, this is still rarely spoken about.

That is also why I am writing this for the teachers out there. If you train locticians, please ask yourself how you can give your students this foundation as well. If there is one thing I could change in our industry right now, it would be this. For you to be able to say one day, I have also been doing this for 26 years. Because the truth is, not many people last in this profession.

I am not going to glorify this work. It takes courage to become a loctician, and a lot of practice. Making dreadlocks for a few friends for fun is one thing. Building a real profession, whether you open a salon, rent a chair or work from home, is another.

And a strong foundation includes far more than learning to make a dreadlock. Learning how to care for yourself is just as important. So is learning how to care for your relationship with your clients and hold space for them. Then come the practical skills: marketing yourself so clients find you and pay you for your work, and building relationships that feel authentic, so they come back again and again. Every one of these matters if you want to thrive.

So, how do you avoid pain as a loctician?

You start by refusing to accept pain as part of the job. You question every movement: how you stand, how you hold your hands, how you position your client, and whether you can sit for parts of the work. You train this awareness from your very first practice session. And you choose a way of working that is gentle on your body and your client's.

It takes time to become a great loctician. I want you to have that time, and to still be doing this work, with joy and without pain, many years from now.

If this resonates with you and you would like to know more about how I work and teach, I would love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected]. I am always open to a conversation to see whether we are a good match, because when a student and teacher truly click, the learning flows so much more easily.

And if you have questions about anything in this post, or would like me to write more about it, send me an email too. I am happy to share.

With love,

Ann-Marie