Alana Unger

Contemporary Hand Analyst

Alana Unger is a world-class professional hand analyst. She specializes in effective short-term counseling. People learn quickly from her how to activate information from their hands into more meaningful lives.

Associate Director of The International Institute of Hand Analysis (IIHA), in Sausalito, California, Alana has read over 13,000 individuals. Within the IIHA, she is Faculty Head. Duties include peer review evaluations, individual instruction, and training's at Introductory, Intensive, Year-Long Certification Program, and Graduate levels. She also holds a position on the IIHA Executive Committee, and is a Contributing Editor of the Hand Analysis Journal.
Within her private practice, she has conducted readings, lectures, and workshops in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Santa Fe, and Seattle as well as the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives. Abroad, she has brought her work with hands to Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. She was a long-term resident reader at East West Bookshop in Menlo Park and Redwood City, California, and has read and lectured at numerous other bookstores and convention centers. Alana has enjoyed appearances on radio and television as well.

In a standard interpretation of a person's hands, Alana makes inked handprints and audiotapes the session of 1-1/2 hours. Her objective is to use hands as a roadmap to aid their owner in taking personally satisfying directions. She encourages follow-up sessions to deepen understanding, to familiarize and personalize the owner with use of this "map." She applies similar principles in other settings, including guidelines for couples, for parenting, for family and other group and relationship dynamics.

Alana has consulted with businesses (including Wells Fargo Bank, Barclay's Global Investors, Accountants Incorporated and other firms) and institutions of social work (including Walden House [HIV Detox Center] in San Francisco and the Center for Intuitive Healing [Heroine Addiction] in Marin County). She has written hand analysis columns and articles for periodical publications, and is writing a book demonstrating the tenets of fingerprint-based hand analysis.

Current projects include a research program addressing chronic or life-threatening illness. In these situations Alana is interested in bridging Hand Analysis with other disciplines such as Psychology, Medicine, and Integrative Therapies. She is writing on the role of Hand Analysis in developing theories of parallel sexuality and spirituality. Also, she is and editor and consultant to the Fingerprints By Mail project of Richard Unger, Founder and Director of the IIHA - and her Significant Other since 1991.

Prior to her career as a Hand Analyst, (1987 - present) Alana's pursuits centered around arts (theatre, painting, photography, writing) and sciences (wildlife biology: especially mammology and ornithology). Affiliated with San Francisco State University, she was involved in wildlife biology, wildlife photography, and was a mammal museum curator. She was also a writer and leader of autobiographical writing groups. Earlier she was a research assistant and co-leader of diabetic groups established to study psychological concomitants of that disease. Meanwhile, teamed with her former husband, Philip, she helped raise a perfect child. These various threads of experience have culminated in her hand-work tapestry.