Save Your Hands Celebrates its 15th Anniversary

2010 marks the 15th anniversary of the first publication of the Save Your Hands! book. As we celebrate this milestone, we look back on the evolution of Save Your Hands through the years, and look ahead to the future.

First published by Infinity Press in Seattle in 1995, Save Your Hands! was the first comprehensive book ever written on injury prevention for manual therapists. There was clearly a need for a book on this subject, since Save Your Hands! quickly became a best-seller. Hailed by critics and educators, the book became a required textbook for training programs and schools throughout the U.S. and Canada as well as Australia, New Zealand, Israel, the UK, Sweden and other countries. Author Lauriann Greene performed Save Your Hands!® Workshops across the U.S. and Canada, and was asked to write articles for all the major massage publications in the U.S. and U.K.  In 1999, Lauriann was asked by Massage Magazine to write the first self-care column ever in a massage publication, "Helping the Healers." After Infinity Press went out of business, Lauriann took over publishing Save Your Hands! with her own company, Gilded Age Press.

The All-New 2nd Edition

In 2005, Lauriann joined forces with Richard W. Goggins, Senior Ergonomist with the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries and a Licensed Massage Practitioner, to research and publish the first reliable statistics on symptoms and injury among American massage therapists (in collaboration with ABMP).  As a result of that collaboration, Lauriann and Richard decided to write the 2nd Edition of Save Your Hands!, with contributions by Janet M. Peterson, PT, DPT and a forword by Ben E. Benjamin, PhD.  The 2nd Edition was published by Body of Work Books (formerly Gilded Age Press) in 2008 and has once again been acclaimed by the press and leading professionals in the manual therapy fields (see reviews and testimonials here).

Although Save Your Hands! was initially written for massage therapists, it was also purchased by physical therapists, chiropractors, occupational therapists, nurses and other hands-on professionals. The 2nd Edition has been greatly revised and expanded and now provides proven methods and authoritative, evidence-based information to help all manual therapists prevent work-related injury. Save Your Hands! remains the definitive self-care manual for manual therapists, and is referenced in nearly every other book and paper on the subject that has been published since 1995.  It continues to be required or recommended reading at hundreds of schools and purchased widely in the U.S., Canada and abroad. We now have distributors in the UK/Europe, Australia/New Zealand and Canada.

New Programs, Courses and Products for Manual Therapists

As we celebrate the 15th anniversary of Save Your Hands!, we're gratified to know that we've been able to help the nearly 100,000 manual therapists who have purchased the book, and countless others who have read it in libraries all over the world, to remain healthy in the career they love. 

And there's lots more to come!  We're now offering Continuing Education (CE) courses, and soon will launch our Certified Injury Prevention Instructor Program, which will be the first training ever available to provide manual therapists with the knowledge and skills they need to teach other therapists how to prevent injury.  We're also consulting with companies who employ manual therapists - spas, clinics and hospitals - to help them provide training and an ergonomically-sound work environment for their treatment staffs. And we'll soon have ergonomics products and downloadable content to offer manual therapists numerous ways to save not only their hands, but their backs, necks, shoulders, and emotional well-being throughout a long, healthy career. We continue to innovate and work with the different manual therapy professions with a single goal in mind: help manual therapists reduce their injury risk and lower the incidence and prevalence of injury in these professions.

Thank you for your continued interest in Save Your Hands!®