Save Your Hands!: The Complete Guide to Injury Prevention and Ergonomics for Manual Therapists

2025 THIRD EDITION: Students and professionals know what it's like to have sore hands or an aching back or neck at the end of the workday. Why? Studies show that massage, bodywork and other manual therapy work is quite physically demanding and puts you at risk for pain and musculoskeletal injury. That's why it's so important for you to know how to protect yourself!

In fact, injury is NOT inevitable! Save Your Hands! has helped thousands of therapists worldwide learn the proven injury prevention and ergonomics strategies, tips and advice needed to protect your health and your investment in your career. And the Third Edition is our most holistic, most complete book so far!!

In a truly accessible, richly-illustrated format, Save Your Hands! Third Edition now includes:

• The up-to-date information you need to safeguard your health and career, including not only about your work, but also activities like mobile phone and computer use
• Detailed, extensive body mechanics instructions to work with less effort and greater comfort
• Comprehensive ergonomics advice to design your treatment space to enable you use good body mechanics and feel at ease as you work
• More alternative techniques to protect vulnerable parts of your body
• A specially designed workout program to get you in condition to work with more confidence and less strain
• Updated information to help you recognize early symptoms and address them effectively so they don’t lead to injuries that can affect your work and your wellbeing
• A new section with practical steps to start the day relaxed, and restore ease and comfort with refreshing “mini-breaks” throughout your day - great for avoiding burnout!
  
  The Third Edition has won acclaim from top experts in manual therapy, like Sandy Fritz, MS, BCTMB, CMBE, Author of Mosby’s Fundamentals of Therapeutic Massage: " I recommend this book for students, educators, and seasoned professionals ”; or David Palmer (the “father” of chair massage):“ I have always considered your book to be a major contribution to our profession.” That’s why it’s the essential book for self-care, and required reading for scores of schools worldwide. Count on Save Your Hands! Third Edition to protect your hands, back, neck, shoulders and emotional well-being throughout a long, healthy career.

For students and professionals in all the manual therapy professions, including massage therapists, physical therapists, physical therapy assistants, occupational therapists, hand therapists, chiropractors, osteopaths, nurses, athletic trainers, and more.

Lauriann Greene has been a leading writer, speaker and researcher on injury prevention and ergonomics for manual therapists for over 20 years. She studied at Brown and Harvard Universities before graduating with honors from Seattle Massage School. She wrote the first ever book on injury prevention for massage therapists (Save Your Hands! 1st Ed., out of print), then the 2nd edition (out of print) and in 2025 published the extensively revised, updated and expanded Save Your Hands! The Complete Guide to Injury Prevention and Ergonomics for Manual Therapists, 3rd Edition. Save Your Hands! is the leading Injury prevention and self-care text for manual therapists including physical therapists, massage therapists, occupational therapists, chiropractors, athletic trainers, osteopaths and more. The Save Your Hands! books have sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Now the leading authority on this subject, Lauriann has written numerous articles for major massage therapy and spa publications, speaks at leading conferences including ABMP and AMTA National and IECSC, and co-authored a 2006 study that produced the first statistics on work-related injury among American massage therapists. In 2006, Lauriann joined forces with ergonomist and massage therapist Rick Goggins and the ABMP on a study that produced the first reliable statistics on the prevalence of injury among massage therapists and bodyworkers. The results were published in 2006 in Massage and Bodywork. She also completed training to become a Certified Ergonomics Assessment Specialist (CEAS) at that time. Lauriann and senior ergonomics colleagues now offer injury prevention and ergonomics consulting and training services to spas, clinics and schools, to help them reduce costly workers' comp claims, absenteeism and turnover due to injury on the job. She also offers continuing education (CE) courses for massage therapists.

Richard W. Goggins, MS, CPE, LMP, is Board Certified as a Professional Ergonomist, and is a Licensed Massage Practitioner in Washington State. He has a bachelor's degree in biology from Columbia University, and a master's degree in Human Factors/Ergonomics from the University of Southern California (USC). During and following his time at USC, Rick worked for Hughes Space and Communications in El Segundo, Calif., helping them to establish their ergonomics program. From there, he moved north to work for the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, where he is now Senior Ergonomist with their Division of Occupational Safety and Health. Through his work at Labor and Industries, Rick has helped employers in a variety of industries prevent injuries among their employees. He isfrequently asked to present talks and workshops on ergonomics at conferences around the country, and has written several articles on the subject for publications including Professional Safety, Journal of Safety Research and Massage & Bodywork. He is a past president of the Puget Sound Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and worked with that group on a project to educate schoolchildren on computer ergonomics.Rick first became interested in massage after receiving excellent treatment from several different massage therapists. He did his massagetraining at Alexandar's School of Natural Therapeutics in Tacoma, Wash., an experience that he still counts as one of his favorites. He is a professional member of the American Massage Therapy Association. Rick combined his in-depth knowledge of injury prevention and manual treatment work in his collaboration with Lauriann Greene on the first-ever injury survey among massage therapists, and on the 2008 second edition of Save Your Hands!

Janet M. Peterson, PT, DPT, has been performing injury prevention services for for over twenty-five years; she has had her own practice inergonomics consulting since 1998 in Seattle, Wash. Janet earned her master's degree in physical therapy from Stanford University and her doctorate in physical therapy through Temple University. She was on the Board of Directors for the American Physical Therapy Association and is a past president of the Physical Therapy Association of Washington, receiving the 2003 "Physical Therapist of the Year" award. She is a member of the Puget Sound Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and the Pacific Northwest Ergonomic Roundtable.