Richard Unger

IIHA Founder

Richard Unger has read over 50,000 pairs of hands and is one of the foremost authorities on hand analysis in the world today.

In 1985, Richard founded the International Institute of Hand Analysis in Marin, California and currently serves as its Director. The Institute programs include weekend intensive workshops, a year long certification training, graduate training and teacher training.

Hand Analysis Intensive classes are held worldwide. The Year Long and Graduate training are ongoing in California. Richard also teaches a course on The Business Side of Metaphysics.

In addition to interactive programs, the International Institute of Hand Analysis produces written material: The Hand Analysis Journal, The Graduate Review, and The Hand Analysis Newsletter. Richard is a contributor to each of these publications and is one of the Editors of the Hand Analysis Journal. A catalog of workshop and lectures on tape and past issues of all publications is available upon request.

Richard has also created and markets a computer program (LifePrints) designed to read Life Purpose from dermatoglyphic (fingerprint) markings.

Richard began teaching hand analysis at SUNY Binghamton, New York in 1969 and taught at the Esoteric Philosophy Center in Houston, Texas. from 1975 - 1983. He has presented his modern approach to this ancient art across the U. S., Canada and in Europe in lectures, workshops, and on radio and television.

Life Purpose from the Fingerprints: 
Richard Unger's Unique Contribution to Hand Analysis

The Navajo Indians have a saying about fingerprints: "The Great Spirit breathes in the breath of life, and the tracks of that breath become our fingerprints."

In 1979 after having read over 12,000 pairs of hands and pretty much everything printed in the English language on Palmistry, Richard Unger's unquenchable thirst for new data led him to the Jessie Jones Medical Library in Houston Texas, to do research on dermatoglyphs, the skin ridges that form the map-like patterns of our fingerprints.

Modern hand analysis is divided into two areas: the interpretation of line formations (chiromancy), and the study of comparative shapes (overall hand structure, finger, palm, and thumb shape), called chirognomy. Though the "rules" of line interpretation are still controversial, hand analysts are more or less in agreement about chirognomy and it is quite accurate. Each portion of the hand represents a different section of the personality: proportionally large areas reveal traits in abundance, small areas the reverse.

In the medical stacks, Richard Unger learned about a second topographic map hidden in the fingerprints. Unlike hand shapes and lines on the palm which can change, this "new" map is unalterable from prior to birth. Following the same logic as chirognomy, the present day fingerprint patterns would reveal the original ingredients of its owner.

The dynamics of fingerprint formation clearly points to a deeper connection to something larger than our conscious self. Whether this larger reality is the DNA legacy of our ancestors or some other plane of multi-dimensional existence, the fingerprints are our personal map to these otherwise uncharted waters.

The Life Purpose Map is made up of two parts: the Life Purpose and the Life Lesson. Your Life Purpose is what you have come to do in this lifetime and your Life Lesson is what you need to learn in order to do it.

Let's move to an analogy of an acorn and an oak tree. You can read the coded information in an acorn to learn that it can never become a rose or a willow tree. An oak tree is possible, but that is merely the potential contained within the seed. If you were expert enough, you could further determine its climate and soil requirements, which bugs it is subject to, etc.

Roughly speaking, the same is true about you and your fingerprints. Your fingerprints reveal your Life Purpose and also, what is required of you for your Life Purpose to emerge. This part of your Life Purpose Map we call your Life Lesson, and it is connected to your Life Purpose with a Formula.

Hand Analysis as developed by Richard Unger uses traditional Hand Analysis methods as well as focuses on the practical formula of how to live your deepest potential as revealed in the map of your Fingerprints.

Why I Read Hands by Richard Unger

Two hands open and in front of my eyes an entire Universe stares back at me. I descend into their world, like a cave explorer, my ropes and lantern at the ready, immersed in this alien environment both strange and familiar. Their essence, the meaning behind the events of their life, is asking me to put into words and images that which calls out for understanding and acceptance.

And when I take notice, I see a transformation in my own experience: I am clear and centered, weightless, aware, more alive, more thankful and more alert than at any other time in my life.

Why do I read hands?

To help other people.

To become more self aware.

Because nothing - nothing - connects me more to my spiritual center.

Because my own Life Purpose commands it.

Because they are there.