Tech-stressed people find balance

If you can't bear the idea of a night away from your smartphone, if you start hyperventilating at the idea of not being able to get online while you're on vacation, if you don't think you could live without your TV, it might be time to plug into a different kind of device: the Soul Tech workshop.

"On a personal level I love the stuff, but I also see how it affects me -- it sucks time," said Leif Hansen, 37, one of two co-facilitators of the workshop, which focuses on helping people reconnect with others and balance technology with living fulfilling lives.

"You can be in a room with someone and even if you're not looking at e-mail," he said, "you're sitting there wanting to look at it."

The 4 1/2-hour experience will be conducted on Capitol Hill Saturday. NBC's "Today" show is scheduled to film the workshop.

Using improvisational acting exercises, group discussions, games, interactive brainstorming and asking questions such as how technology hinders and helps you achieve your goals, Hansen and business partner Jay Kimball will try to reinvigorate the humanity that sometimes gets lost amid the gadgets and technology we're immersed in daily.

"We did a workshop on Orcas Island a couple months ago, the 'Humanity 2.0' workshop," said Kimball, 54, who worked as an engineer for 25 years before becoming a facilitator. "Technology kept showing up over and over again. In general, it was hurting more than it was helping. It was that love/hate relationship people have with technology that put together this Soul Tech workshop."

Penny Pobiecke, a participant in that program along with her husband, Mark Stiffler, found that being able to share viewpoints with others thinking about the same thing was most useful.

"My husband owns his own company, he's a computer programmer, so he tends to spend a lot of time in front of a computer and using technology," she said. "We're having a lot of discussions about the benefits of technology versus how it can drag you down."

Because she is a school counselor and he is able to work remotely, the couple have plenty of opportunity for personal time and vacations. But it doesn't mean technology has made everything A-OK.

"It's a double-edged sword," Pobiecke said. "You can go anywhere you want, but you can also work anywhere you want. That's an ongoing discussion between the two of us.

"We talked about the fear of being addicted to technology, and how it's improved our lives," she continued. "I'm very comfortable with the technology I know how to use. I'm on that fence of convenience and having a little bit of fear of being dependent on technology. It's constantly changing and just when I've mastered it, I have to think, 'What else do I have to learn?' My husband is always on the cutting edge and seems to enjoy that more than I do."

Hansen also thinks about these issues constantly.

"I have a personal struggle with balancing technological use so it doesn't get in the way of my family life," he said.

To that end, he and his wife enforce a no-cell-phones rule at meal time and a "low-tech Sabbath" on Sundays, when they emphasize play with their 4-year-old daughter and they turn off anything with a screen -- computer, TV, cell phone. He also uses free software that blanks out the screen at intervals to give him frequent breaks. They're also not wired at home, which forces Hansen to do his Wi-Fi work in cafes, again emphasizing connecting with others.

Early in his career, Hansen was in the consulting business, working with tech support and hand-holding folks who were terrified of the changing technology.

Although he's native to the Pacific Northwest, he studied theology in Canada, where he developed a thesis that drew parallels between J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth -- and its analogy to the industrial age encroaching on organic life -- with the technology in our world.

His partner has seen technology affect his life too.

"Technology can be very magnetic," Kimball said. "You sit in front of a computer and it's hard to pull away. But what need is that feeding? When you do pull away and spend more time with family, reading a book and being in nature, you feel better."