Stacey Morin’s fingerprints are all over Pittsfield.

In her role as a yoga instructor, she is an unexpected force of grace and skill.  Unexpected, that is, to those who know she has experienced her own struggles with rheumatoid arthritis, a disease that attacks healthy tissue in the body, resulting in stiff joints and pain with movement.  But that doesn’t stop Morin.  In addition to offering her yoga classes to a loyal and grateful clientele, she reaches out to the business community, offering free classes to business owners and providing samples of their products and services to her other students.

She buys her students whatever that particular business is selling, like ice cream or flowers, simply to lend hometown support.

Having experienced painful movement firsthand, yoga has changed that part of Morin’s life, and if you talk to her students at Powerful You Yoga, they’ll tell you her prints are all over them as well. On their once-achy knees and their once-stiff fingers. On their  core and their balance and their demeanor.

Keeping people and business es healthy. That’s what Morin does.

“You can build community among locally-owned farms and businesses,” said Morin, a 1999 Concord High graduate, shortly before her class of 10 began. “This is fun and I love to have fun. I love to be a respite for people to escape reality.”

She’s created alliances with Cold Spring Farm in Alton, a wedding venue with a big, modernized barn, and Northwoods Brewing Company in Northwood, where Morin and her husband visited occasionally. A friendship evolved two years ago.

“I told her we wanted to grow our program and she said yoga could help with that,” said Sarah Fenerty, a retired English teacher from Coe-Brown Northwood Academy who now works full-time in her family’s business.

“She called it a bend and brew. It’s awesome because it builds community and I’ve gained some customers as a result.”

Morin’s introduction to Cold Spring Farm came six months later when she floated an idea past Diane Loudon, who runs the farm along with her family.

“She approached me,” Loudon said. “She said, ‘Hey, would you consider doing yoga in your barn?’ We were thrilled and we had always wanted to do that, and all of a sudden, she is at my doorstep, bigger than life.”

Loudon used that phrase, ‘bigger than life,’ to describe Morin multiple times. She said the mutual benefits each gained from the arrangement — spreading information about both enterprises to a potentially larger customer base — were important in a business sense.

But this was about more. To Fenerty and Loudon, Morin’s ceaseless smile and positive energy won them over. As did the mood and tone Morin established in her program, making sure the greenest of novices would feel comfortable and calm.

Morin staged a full-day retreat at Cold Spring Farm last week. The gathering included yoga, meditation, hiking and lectures. Loudon now promotes Morin’s yoga classes at her farm.

“We advertise (Morin) to our wedding couples,” Loudon said. “We tell them if they want to do this before the ceremony, it’s very relaxing. And we’ve had some takers.”

“She is so amazing,” Loudon continued. “Her personality, her perseverance, her integrity. So much integrity. She’s a bull in a China shop when it comes to her business and she was so vulnerable when she arrived.”

Morin had been active at Concord High, swimming and playing basketball. Nevertheless, her arthritis impacted her youth. If she partook in an activity, she’d pay for it later. She struggled physically for 15 years.

“If I took a walk or worked out, I would be on the couch for two weeks,” Morin said. “It took a toll.”

She needed something gentler, more forgiving. And when her friend brought her to a yoga class 10 years ago, Morin was hooked. She had found her athletic niche.

Since then, as Loudon said, Morin has turned into a “force of nature, and we are blessed to have her.”

She learned and learned and learned some more. She graduated from an intense program, putting in 200 hours and expanding to lessons on philosophy, anatomy and breath work. She opened her business five years ago. At a recent one-hour session, Morin was instructing 10 people, five on each side of the room.

The contrast between teacher and students was vast. Nothing looked strenuous to Morin. Her legs were straight like a flat stretch of highway, with no bending during certain moves that turned her clients into sweating, hard-breathing pretzels.

Each movement of an arm or a leg was done with precision, patience and purpose. She reached down to her toes as though they weren’t very far, and she never stumbled during some of those balancing acts involving one leg. Even the graceful movement of her fingers made them look in shape.

She ended the session by playing eight crystal singing bowls, touching each one with a glass wand to create soothing bell-like sounds.

And while her students were not able to recreate Morin’s artistic-like movements, that hardly mattered. Their lives, they say, are far better.

Frank McDonald is grateful that after eight dislocated shoulders and a pair of herniated discs, he’s feeling good these days.

“I still ski,” McDonald said. “If not for yoga, that would not be the case. My wife introduced me to it 12 years ago. I have better balance and flexibility.”

He and his wife, Laura Dunham, spend summers here and live on Long Island the rest of the year. The huge pool of yoga programs and instructors in the New York City area failed to offer what she’s getting here.

“I can’t find great yoga there,” Dunham said. “Not like here.”

Donna Young and her daughter Kylie turn their weekly session into a girls’ night out. They had dinner plans after class.

“I play better golf,” Donna said. “I have stamina, flexibility, balance, core.”

“When I leave here, I feel great,” added Kylie. “I feel energetic and like I’m healing.”

It’s all part of a small-town partnership that helps individuals financially, emotionally and physically.

As Morin said, “Find your tree pose. Maybe that tree wants to throw those arms up into the sky. You got this. We need to balance everything in our lives.”

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