Something was terribly wrong. This doesn’t feel right at all, I thought, as I wiped the beauty mask from my face. My skin felt parched and raw. Why didn’t I feel blessed by the benefits of the much-touted Multani Mitti, which was the very base of my mask?

The answer lay in my skin type as well as in how Multani Mitti (Fuller’s Earth) works: I have dry skin and the Multani Mitti works by sucking out impurities from your skin, thus making it even drier. The solution? Add a bit of coconut oil to the mask. It then provides the perfect balance between moisturising your skin and cleaning it from impurities as well.

Some of the many benefits of Multani Mitti are well known: it cleans your skin, removes acne and blemishes, and adds glow to your skin, etc.

You can make customised Multani Mitti face packs by adding rosewater to it for oily skin, or milk almond and honey for combination skin; add a bit of olive or coconut oil to the combination for dry skin. A good addition to any face pack is lemon juice. It works as an antiseptic and natural bleach.

Multani Mitti can be used on as a body mask and even as a hair mask. Most resources online will tell you to use Multani Mitti paste as you would a hair shampoo. Don’t. I tried doing it and failed miserably. The thing is, Multani Mitti is also used as a scrub, and that’s how it’s going to feel in your hair. You can’t just dump a lump on your head and work through it the way you would shampoo. I tried and I felt it would scrub the hair off my scalp!

From the city of the saints comes an organic beauty solution: mud. Without these tips, however, you might have trouble cleansing your skin

The correct way would be to seek some help. Soak Multani Mitti in rosewater — add lemon to it — keep for about 15 minutes while regularly moving a spoon through the paste until it’s smooth. Take help from a friend and comb your hair with a wide-toothed comb. Add the clay in small clumps and work through your hair gently with the comb and leave it until it dries — usually around 15-20 minutes. Gently rinse the clay out of your hair with warm water in the sink, try to avoid getting the clay on the rest of your body! Use the comb and eventually you may be able to get all of it out. Don’t expect it to be easy.

Again, if you have dry hair, it’s wise to apply olive oil or coconut oil on your hair a couple of hours before you apply the clay mask. You can wash your hair with a gentle shampoo afterwards. Don’t use too much of it, a little bit to clean any clay residue should be enough.

But more than just to enhance beauty and dermatological health, Multani Mitti can be used as an antiseptic for wounds. Make a simple water and clay paste and apply it over the affected region. It will begin healing in no time.

As with any beauty treatments, don’t expect results overnight.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, October 4th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play