Crystal Hall floated on her back, almost weightless, eyes closed, in an indoor pool filled with nurturing, body-temperature water. Vicki Mitchell cradled Hall’s head and shoulders and led her through the water like a dance partner, creating whirlpools in her wake.

Mitchell moved silently, slowly, pressing down on Hall’s right hip, then the left, gently stretching her atrophied muscles. Then she shifted position, softly grasped the crown of Hall’s head and pulled her languidly, like a piece of seaweed floating on the current.

“It’s like the ‘Pieta,’ like Mary holding Jesus,” Hall’s friend Joanna Folger said quietly as she looked on. “I know for Crystal it really renews her body and her spirits.”

Watsu, or water shiatsu, allows Hall to move her body and muscles in ways she wouldn’t be able to on her own. Hall, 48, has dermatomyositis, a rare, painful form of muscular dystrophy in which her immune system attacks both her muscles and the skin around her joints as if they were foreign to her body.

“This treatment, the Watsu, is very beneficial for me in part because it stretches my muscles,” Hall said before her session at Mitchell’s pool. “It reduces my pain considerably. It lasted a whole day, where I had almost no pain, which is very surprising. The pain was lessened for almost a week.”

Stories like Hall’s make Watsu even more rewarding for Mitchell, 41. The Blue Hill woman first encountered the practice several years ago at a spa in Costa Rica, but when she read about it, she thought it sounded a bit “new agey” for her taste. Then she saw someone receive the therapy, and she knew she had to try it.

“I fell off a horse, dislocated my shoulder, and my neck was jammed,” she recalled recently. “Nothing was releasing my neck until I got into the water and received the therapy. It was really a turning point in healing my neck.”

Mitchell was also at a turning point in her life. For years, she had run Vicki’s 2nd to None, a secondhand shop in Ellsworth, but she was ready for a change – and Watsu was it. So she went to Harbin Hot Springs in California, where she trained with Watsu founder Harold Dull. She has since become a member of the Worldwide Aquatic Bodywork Association, and is one of three Watsu practitioners in Maine.

Mitchell is a compact, athletic woman with a beatific smile and a peaceful, nurturing way about her. People who have received Watsu therapy or seen her practice on someone else often remark on her caring, almost motherly approach.

“Vicki holds her with so much love – it’s so renewing,” Folger said as she watched Hall receive the therapy.

Folger occasionally accompanies Hall and her personal care assistant, Tabatha Coombs, on the trip from Bar Harbor to Blue Hill. The women have been friends since childhood, and Folger has fond memories of Hall’s “wild child” days.

“I always cry a little because it’s so freeing to see her move the way I remember her moving when we were young,” Folger said.

For Mitchell, water is the great equalizer. To that end, She installed a hydraulic lift to make her pool accessible to people with physical disabilities. Since she began her practice in September, she has worked with people who have muscular dystrophy, arthritis, polio and Parkinson’s disease – as well as people who have muscle tension from day-to-day stress.

She has worked hard to create a healing oasis. Housed in a quaint stucco cottage crafted from self-insulated, eco-friendly building materials, the Watsu center feels like a special retreat.

Mitchell chose a warm palette of terra cotta, celadon and brick-red glass tiles to accent the keyhole-shaped pool and private changing room. Orchids and tropical foliage plants flourish in the warm, humid air, making the space feel like a rainforest in miniature. It’s a fitting retreat for this calm, silent treatment.

“There’s nowhere to go but in,” Mitchell said. “That’s when your body heals itself, when the body can be quiet.”

For Crystal Hall, that quiet introspection has had a profound healing effect. She has been living with dermatomyositis for the past 25 years, and her muscles have deteriorated to the point where she can’t raise her hand to her face. Though the physical tension is obvious, this creates mental tension as well. When she’s in the Watsu pool, however, some of that melts away.

“Everything I do, I think, ‘Who’s going to do the next thing for me? How am I going to get this done? How am I going to get the toothpaste on my toothbrush? Brush my hair? Put on a sweater?'” Hall said. “All those thoughts are eliminated for that time. It’s almost trancelike.”

On a recent afternoon, she floated in the warm water, her torso rising as she inhaled and sinking a bit as she exhaled. Mitchell looked down, smiled and gently rocked her in her arms like a baby. Hall’s eyes were closed and her ears were below the water’s surface.

It was the portrait of serenity.

For information, visit www.mainewatsutherapy.com, www.waba.edu, or call Vicki Mitchell at 374-2520.