Sacred Energy

Jain monks and nuns pull out their own hair by the roots once or twice a year, a practice called loch, embracing discomfort willingly as part of total detachment

Jain monastics choose one of the more physically demanding ascetic practices in any tradition specifically because it cannot be performed without full, deliberate consent to discomfort.

Keshalochana, the practice of pulling out one's own hair by the roots rather than cutting or shaving it, is performed by Jain monks and nuns once or twice a year, typically by hand and without any tool to ease the process. Unlike shaving, which can be done quickly and with minimal discomfort, hand-plucking is slow and painful by design, and Jain teaching treats that difficulty as the point rather than an unfortunate side effect. The practice fits within the broader Jain doctrine of voluntary hardship as a spiritual technology: enduring a chosen physical discomfort is understood to weaken attachment to bodily comfort itself, which Jain thought identifies as one of the subtler obstacles to liberation. Because keshalochana cannot be performed passively or absentmindedly, it functions as a periodic, embodied renewal of the ascetic's consent to the whole discipline of detachment they have undertaken.