A new hilltop retreat for mind, body and spirit comes to Austin

A dream is taking place on a hilltop overlooking Lake Travis. The dream of Ken and Joyce Beck is The Crossings, a unique spiritual oasis for Austinites.

"The Crossings really started with a process of dreaming," said Ken Beck, who worked for Dell before deciding to open The Crossings with his wife. "We started thinking about second careers ...We did a little exercise that said if you could dream and if you could do whatever you wanted to do without restriction what would it be."

The consensus from family and friends who the Becks asked to do this exercise -- was a retreat center.

"The Crossings unfolded," said Joyce Beck, a former psychotherapist. "Everybody involved in this project right from the initial dreaming of what it was going to be. It was friends, and it was coworkers, and people from our church and then it became the architects, then it became the builders and then it became the staff. And it's about community building. And it's been just an incredible experience."

The Crossings is a blending of Joyce and Ken Beck's talents. It is going to be a learning center that includes facilities for retreats, conferences, performances, a wellness center and spa.

The center's design was created by the Hatch Partnership, an Austin-based design center.

"We strove to select materials and forms that were appropriate to the Hill Country," said Tom Hatch of Hatch Partnership. "The goal was to allow people and to encourage people to feel really good about how they are and where they are."

Step inside this new place that was designed to help Central Texans heal mind, body and spirit.

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Produced by Tom Spencer.