I Wasn't Depressed. I Just Needed A Haircut

DT exhaling ease after his regularly scheduled crown maintenance.

For more than twenty-five years behind the chair, I’ve watched people walk in carrying a heaviness they couldn’t name — and walk out feeling lighter in ways they couldn’t explain. The title of this piece isn’t about my own emotional state; it’s a reminder of how often we misinterpret what our bodies are trying to tell us. Sometimes what feels like emotional fog isn’t depression at all. It’s energetic buildup. It’s memory weight. And a haircut, when done with intention, can initiate a level of healing most people never realize they’re accessing.

Through Hair Is The Garden We Wear, I teach that hair is not simply aesthetic material. It is crystalline in structure, capable of transmitting, receiving, and storing information. Our strands hold memory — emotional residue, environmental imprint, ancestral frequency. When we cut hair, we aren’t just removing length; we are releasing stored information. This is why a haircut can shift a person’s mood, clarity, and sense of self more dramatically than the physical weight of the hair removed. The change is metaphysical. It’s a recalibration of frequency.

This is why the role of the barber or stylist is far more significant than most people realize. A practitioner who understands the energetic and symbolic dimensions of hair is not just providing a service — they are stewarding a crown, facilitating release, and participating in a lineage of care that predates modern cosmetology. When someone sits in our chair, they are entering a ritual space, whether they know it or not. The professional who recognizes this is worth far more than the price of the cut.

My recommendation, after decades of practice, is simple: hold your cosmetology professionals to a higher standard, and encourage them to hold themselves to one. If hair is our divine antennae — our living archive — then those who touch it should do so with intention, respect, and awareness. We deserve practitioners who understand the sacredness of their craft. And we deserve to be recognized as the cultural, emotional, and energetic workers we truly are.