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Lauriann Greene, CEAS

Lauriann has been a leading writer, speaker and researcher on injury prevention for manual therapists since 1995. She studied at Brown and Harvard Universities and attended the Mannes College of Music before graduating in 1993 from Seattle Massage School. As a former professional orchestral conductor and pianist, Lauriann was interested in working with other musicians to reduce playing-related upper extremity injury. This interest led her to write an article on musculoskeletal disorders among musicians that appeared in Massage Therapy Journal in 1994.

Lauriann used this research, as well as her own experience with work-related injury, to develop the "Save Your Hands!" workshops for massage therapists. Between 1993 and 2003, she taught these injury prevention workshops to hundreds of students and professionals across the United States and Canada. Based on the anecdotal evidence she obtained from workshop participants, and existing research on musculoskeletal disorders, she wrote the first edition of Save Your Hands!  When it was published in 1995, Save Your Hands! was the first comprehensive book on injury prevention and treatment written for manual therapists.

Since that time, Lauriann has written numerous articles for publications including Massage Therapy Journal, Massage Magazine, Massage & Bodywork, and Positive Health Magazine. She also wrote a regular column in Massage Magazine called "Helping the Healers" for two years. In 2005, she joined forces with ergonomist and massage therapist Rick Goggins on a survey that produced the first reliable statistics on the prevalence of injury among massage therapists and bodyworkers, the results of which were publish in 2006 in Massage & Bodywork. In addition to their collaboration on Save Your Hands!, Lauriann and Rick continue to work together to offer a range of injury prevention and ergonomics consulting and training services to manual therapists. Lauriann recently completed training to become a Certified Ergonomics Assessment Specialist.

Lauriann is also an Associate Editor of the book Trail Guide to the Body by Andrew Biel, LMT.

Richard W. Goggins, MS, CPE, LMP

Rick 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 the Senior Ergonomist with their Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

Through his work at Labor and Industries, Rick has helped employers in a wide variety of industries to prevent injuries among their employees. He is frequently asked to present talks and workshops on ergonomics at conferences around the country, and he has published several articles on the subject in publications including Professional Safety, Journal of Safety Research, and Massage and Bodywork. He is a past president of the Puget Sound Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and continues to work with this 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 received his massage training 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 has combined his in-depth knowledge of injury prevention and manual treatment work in his collaboration with Lauriann Greene on the injury survey among massage therapists, and on this second edition of Save Your Hands!

Contributor to the 2nd Edition: Janet M. Peterson, PT, DPT

Janet has been performing injury prevention services for twenty years; she has had her own practice in ergonomic consulting since 1998 in Seattle, Washington. She earned her master’s degree in physical therapy from Stanford University and her doctorate in physical therapy through Temple University. Janet is 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.

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