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

2025 THIRD EDITION

You became a therapist to help people—not to end up hurting yourself.

In the demanding professions of manual and massage therapy, pain and injury don’t have to be the price of doing the work you love. Yet many massage therapists and other hands-on practitioners experience painful hands, achy backs, and repetitive strain that can eventually take a toll on your body and health.

You can change this scenario. Save Your Hands! Third Edition empowers you with numerous prevention strategies, and easy-to-apply tips to help you work with more ease and self-assurance. You'll learn how to work smart not hard. You can build a successful, healthy career as an accomplished therapist for many years to come.

Drawing on decades of experience and expertise in this specific subject, Lauriann Greene offers therapists a comprehensive, evidence-based, and authoritative self-care resource that many practitioners use throughout their careers. Combining extensive information on injury risk factors, biomechanics, ergonomics, and self care therapy activities, this revised and expanded edition and guide to self care translates essential information into techniques and habits you can use every day.

Inside, you'll discover:

• Practical ergonomics strategies to improve body mechanics, reduce unnecessary strain, and work with more confidence and efficiency.
• Guidance for setting up your workspace to provide effective treatment with more ease and less effort, and promote a way of working that is relaxed and comfortable.
• Body-saving techniques to help reduce the physical stress of hands-on work.
• Conditioning and self-care programs designed specifically for the demands of manual and massage therapy and to refresh your body and mind.
• Tools for managing your workload and creating a sustainable practice, whether you’re a student, new practitioner, or experienced professional.
• Numerous Illustrations, checklists, and daily job help ideas to make this important information accessible and easy to apply.

Don't wait until pain forces you to change your work life. Start by identifying your risks, improving your workspace, refine your techniques, and building habits that support your body as well as your clients. You deserve a pain-free career, have less emotional stress while helping your clients and demonstrating your expertise - Save Your Hands! Third Edition shows you how.

Protect your body. Prevent injury. Avoid burnout. Keep doing the work you love.

Order Save Your Hands! Third Edition today.

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 ”; and David Palmer (the “father” of chair massage):“ I have always considered your book to be a major contribution to our profession.” 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.