BREAKING DOWN TO BREAKTHROUGH WITH VANESSA HONG
I’m very excited for Taurus season to begin this afternoon, but I’m slipping in my favorite Aries girl Vanessa Hong to officially close out the season. You probably know Vanessa because she’s one of the coolest girls on the ‘gram, she had a hit blog The Haute Pursuit and made incredible jewelry and faux fur coats back in the day. We met many years ago through the fashion industry, but our connection to spirituality cemented our bond. I never leave a conversation with Vanessa without an iPhone notes filled with ideas and authors to investigate.
For me, pursuing a spiritual path has been a means for keeping my anxiety disorder in check, being clear on my values, and has made it easier for me to connect to gratitude and compassion. Also, I’m a Pisces and we just have a natural inclination towards all spiritual realms.
I’ve always been so inspired by Vanessa’s dedication to her own spiritual evolution, and commitment to her yoga practice and TM (transcendental meditation)—but I was relieved to learn that her path wasn’t so linear. Over the last few years she’s transcended the job title of fashion influencer as she aspired to bring a bigger purpose to her work, and launched her podcast Vanessa Wants to Know to continue asking the bigger questions in life—but she had to fall off the path a few times first.
Below, Vanessa takes me through her journey of defining spirituality for herself, a meltdown at a fashion week party, a fateful trip to India, and how 2020 impacted her practice.
Read the edited interview below, or you can listen to our full conversation.
Would you say you’ve had a spiritual awakening?
Vanessa: I’ve asked myself that many times, I don’t know. I’ve definitely had deeply spiritual experiences. I think we typically see a spiritual awakening, as like an, “a-ha! Now I’m enlightened!” moment.
How did your spiritual journey begin?
Vanessa: I started my spiritual journey way before I launched my blog. After uni, I was working in biotech and I was at a crossroads: I had this great job, perfect boyfriend, but I was not living in alignment with who I thought I was or who I wanted to be. I was up for a promotion that would require me to relocate from Canada to the US, along with the promise of a big raise. But I sorta felt like, what am I doing? I’m wearing a suit every day to work, I’m behind a computer, I’m trying to sell stuff to scientists that they may not really need.
When the Olympics came to Vancouver in 2011, someone on the street handed me a voucher for 2 free weeks of yoga. I decided to try it out, and after I went to that first yoga class, I felt like I was floating on clouds. So I started going every day. My yoga teacher says you have to break the body first to break the mind. That was the beginning of my spiritual journey or redefining it for myself because I was always around it. My mom is a very liberal Buddhist—but I never felt connected to it beyond the surface of just going to temple and lighting incense. But I’ve always been a seeker—and that is another key element of spirituality—a curiosity of many different modes of spirituality and religion.
Did you feel committed to this path right away?
Vanessa: Yes, but then I moved to China after I left my biotech job. You'd think I would’ve gotten deeper into spirituality while I was there—but I didn’t, I went in the opposite direction. I started partying a lot. I didn't do yoga, never prayed or meditated. I ended up getting really sick and decided to go plant-based, and that was sort of my re-entry into a spiritual practice.
How do you currently define spirituality for yourself? And how do you practice it?
Vanessa: I define it as connection. Connection to source, to God, to this feeling that swirls around in my belly. I can’t describe it. When I really feel connected, it’s as if there's a level of objectivity with everything. It’s not about ego, it’s not all about me, me, me. It comes in spurts. The older I become, the more I practice, the better I am at recognizing. Today I practice it through yoga, meditation, pranayama and chanting.
Your relationship with fashion and the work that you do as an influencer has really changed over the last few years, I think because of your pursuit of spirituality. How did that come about?
Vanessa: I watched the documentary Cost of Fast Fashion, and it prompted me to stop production on my line of faux fur coats—even though it technically was not fast fashion—but I was just questioning, can I even work in fashion anymore?
I had a meltdown in 2017, when I had to go to New York for a big designer event. Right before the party, someone had sent me a video about the brand growing animals in China to solely use for fur and I was so upset. I was just feeling low before I got to the event, but I had to get through it— there was a contract, and money was at stake. As soon as I got to the party, I felt like I was on the set of a Zoolander movie. It was a zoo. It felt like the complete opposite of what I was practicing—and I just thought, ‘oh my gosh, there's zero alignment with this brand.’
When I hopped in an Uber home, my driver was like, “wow where were you? Looks like such a cool party.” And I was like, “I just had the worst night.” Then we get into a conversation about my private spiritual life... things I hadn’t really talked about with a lot of people. Turns out that he was Buddhist, very steeped in the practice, and handed me a card— he had been chanting mantras on 23rd street for the last 30 years. I just thought, what a crazy night—I went to this fashion event, had a meltdown, and then I got in this car with a guy who has such great energy, and this spiritual practice—and the ride ends with him telling me, “you’re going to be okay.”
I got back to my hotel, I cried, and I was like, that’s it. I don’t wanna do this anymore, fuck fashion, fuck all these people, I’m done with it. That night while I was journaling, I decided I would really love to do a podcast and find ways to give back to people. What's the point of having this power, influence, and money if it means nothing to me, and nothing to the people who consume my content? Not only was that the moment that pushed me to start switching up the content I was creating, but also the genesis of my podcast, Vanessa Wants to Know.
I remember when you first shared the podcast idea with me. It just seemed like such a natural progression for you. You’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, you’re outspoken, you’ve reinvented your business a lot over the years, and I feel like you have always tried to make the most out of any opportunity. So before you get the podcast idea off the ground you also had a bit of a life-changing trip to India...
Vanessa: Yes, after coming to another crossroads and deciding to finally move to New York in 2017, I found a yoga studio in my neighborhood, and they were doing a trip to India. I booked the trip, got my visa, but I’m an avoider, so I put off buying the flight to India because it was going to be so expensive—I just thought something would work out!
And just like I knew it would, a few days before Paris Fashion Week ended a friend messaged me that the brand Solani was having a party in Rajasthan and they wanted me to come. Days later, I'm flying to India. And this was an incredible way to enter India, fabulous parties, we’re staying in this former palace turned hotel. I went from this very 5-star experience, like peacocks outside while we’re eating breakfast, to then meeting my yoga studio in Rishikesh. That’s where everyone starts their yoga journey, it is the origin source where yoga the physical practice started.
So, to start off the yoga trip, they forget me at the airport in the middle of nowhere. After waiting for hours, they finally pick me up and my guard is up immediately. I’m super entitled, I’m like, ‘I can't believe you guys forgot me.’ We get to a tiny little hotel. I’m thinking I can’t believe I agreed to do this. We’re doing 4 hours of Vinyasa every day. The first class is often at 5 or 6am. We were going to 6 different cities in 18 days. The first 2 weeks were just me fighting the experience, my reality, me thinking I’m too good for all of this.
Then I had this very crystallizing moment when a girl I became friends with on the trip called me out—in a loving, but very Chinese way (we’re very direct, no mincing of words) said, “why haven't you enjoyed this trip? Do you think it's because you're too good for us?” I have very rarely been confronted like that as an adult, by a friend or someone I care about. My immediate response... it felt like someone punched me in the stomach, like how dare you? In my head, I’m like— bitch, she just called you out! You do think you're too good for these people! You think their value is less than yours! Oh you think you are so spiritual, you give advice to all these people about equanimity, treating people with compassion, you can’t even do that on this trip, in India of all places.
After that confrontation, the whole trip turned around for me—and I saw things differently. It was my ego. I went from showing up late to showing up on time for yoga classes, doing all the vinyasas, and being much kinder to the people around me. I surrendered to what was happening. The rest of the trip was incredible, and when I wasn't blocking myself, having my ego dictate my thoughts, the trip became magical. The first 6 months after coming back a lot of things were shifting in my life. I broke up with my partner of 7 years. I really started to throw myself back into my yoga practice. It was the epitome of breaking down to really breakthrough.
I think it's so interesting how you were really confronted with these two lives you were living on this India trip. That very ego-driven, materialistic side, the vanity of it all— all these things we’re surrounded by in our everyday lives as people who work in fashion. Then when you strip that all away, you do have to ask, who am I when I don’t have all these things?
Vanessa: Yes, and I was that girl wearing Stella McCartney slides on the yoga retreat. Everyone was wearing backpacks, proper shoes, and here I was, coming in with my most casual Paris outfits. Carrying these 2 large luggages around during the entire trip. I ended up abandoning so much stuff. It was a literal and figurative letting go.
Now four years later, what do you think about the journey you’ve been on since then, and where are you at with your spiritual practice?
Last year, I kind of divorced myself from a lot of the spiritual stuff that I had been doing. For 2 years, I studied very closely with a mantra teacher on top of my yoga practice. But then a lot of undealt with rage was triggered last summer during BLM. It made me question my relationship to spirituality. Who are the gatekeepers? Looking at my yoga studio, almost all the teachers are white. Hearing these people saying things like, “yeah let’s just think positive thoughts?” I just thought, what the fuck? It was a true reckoning moment for me.
I was in a hopeless moment, like, we as humans, we can't even offer each other civility? What’s the point of anything? Why should I do this? I don’t know how you felt, but being around white people felt triggering, especially after protesting, and attending talks, hearing stories from Black people. It triggered a lot of my own PTSD I’d never dealt with. I was like, “I've never dealt with racism”—then realizing, holy shit, no all those things you swept under the rug, that was racism. If we don’t deal with trauma, it will fester and eat away at us.
I’m still trying to recalibrate my relationship to it. I have kept up with my yoga practice. People will say they are shocked I’m not meditating anymore, or I'm not doing other things. I was kind of sick of being pigeonholed. Who am I without this spiritual practice? Am I doing it for the right reasons? Am I doing it because I wanna tick all the boxes? Because I wanna be a goody-two-shoes? Or because I want to transcend this life and evolve?
Also, you have to question whether you’re doing it as an escape from something? I think about that a lot.
Yes, and it’s hard for me to do things halfway or moderately—so when I threw myself into my practice, I found myself saying things like, “oh do you really think you should be doing that?” “Have you thought about it this way?” And really prescribing things to people with real-life problems. After lots of introspection, I believe it's good to have structure, but for me, spirituality is something you take off the mat, you bring with you everywhere. To become closer to your own spiritual self, you have to know yourself. What I’ve found from stepping away and being with myself, it’s like regaining sovereignty to me first. You can't punish yourself for not meditating. That’s not what the practice is supposed to be like. In life, we have to show ourselves a great level of compassion.
Absolutely. There are also times I have to examine myself, like I’m a very curious person, I’m a seeker, and I love to learn—but when does it cross over from doing this to learn, to I'm trying to fix myself, so I can achieve X,Y,Z. When can I just be? There’s a big part of me that’s a fixer.
It’s very human that when you're in pain, you want the pain to go away. You want it to go away right now. But pain is a teacher. All the most transcendent moments, all my most memorable life-teaching moments have come when something bad has happened, “bad” moments, we always instantly want to get rid of it. And that is a very human response. Right?
We as humans are duplicitous, we’re contradictory, there's light and darkness, and when you don't allow yourself to just be you, sometimes you're miserable, sometimes you're jealous, ragey, petty. And to not recognize those feelings, and to try to ignore them, as if they’ll disappear, if you just try to replace it with something good, that could be very dangerous too. Let me just be bad for once and not meditate today. I’m starting to really re-evaluate what does practice mean to me. You can only do that when you're really you—the full you.
What do you think about people who call spiritual practices “woo woo”?
I’ve been guilty of using the term in the past, but I hate it, and I think racism is embedded in it. A lot of people don’t know what the origins of a lot of these practices are. When you talk about yoga, one of the most ancient traditions from one of the most ancient civilizations on the planet, or “alternative” medicine, alternative healing modalities like Reiki, Ayurveda, Chinese medicine. People brush it off as “woo woo,” —like comparative to what? Medicine created by white people?
I had a white facialist ask me, “does Gua Sha even work?” Um yeah, it works because it’s not just about scraping your face and de-puffing it. Gua Sha is a TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) practice that’s used on the body, it’s akin to acupressure and acupuncture. People have taken this ancient practice, divorced it from its history, its people, diluted it, in order to make money.
Another issue I think about a lot within the spiritual community is spiritual bypassing…
I have a big issue with spiritual bypassing—this comes up in the yoga community a lot. Spirituality functions in the real world. I think it's untruthful for someone to say that they are fully enlightened while here. You still have to make money to survive, you need to eat, you're living in this physical realm. I was once on the spectrum of spiritual bypassing, saying things like, ‘Oh we’re just all spirituals, we're all light beings,’ which is true, but these spirits and souls live within bodies, and not all bodies are equal on this planet. It’s unfair, and it’s invalidating to those people who are marginalized.
I had this epiphany a year after I went to India. Those of us with privilege, whether financial, educational, it is our responsibility to do better. If my education wasn't fully paid off, if I didn't have a good job, if I didn't have the freedom of being single with no children, I don't know if I would be as grounded and as tapped into my own evolution. So, there is a great responsibility, as privileged individuals, when you have the time, space, and resources, to share that aspect of our lives and be able to help others directly or indirectly through what we’ve learned.
I will definitely hold on to that. Now, what would you recommend for someone who is curious about spirituality and exploring this path?
I would tell them: if you're physically able, take a yoga class, there’s a lot of donation-based ones if you’re not able to afford it, or free classes online. Ideally, once the pandemic is over, go to an in-person class where you feel safe and can really get into it. In The Body Keeps the Score, they show empirically, how beneficial yoga can be for people with severe PTSD, trauma, depression—and there’s so many different types from Yoga Nidra to Hatha. It's kind of like therapy; you need to shop around until you find the right practice.
Vanessa’s Reading List
The Alchemist
This isn’t a classic spiritual read, but it’s a nice and soft entry point for someone who is curious. You could probably read this in a day.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
One of those books that you’ll keep coming back to.
The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living
This is the ultimate guide on improving your life through compassion and love.
The Power of Now
Although it was a hard read for me at the time— Eckhart Tolle does a really good at explaining the concept of ego to someone who may or may not have read much on Buddhism.
The Heart of The Buddha’s Teaching
His books are short, very digestible and impactful.
The Little Prince
A very famous French book—it’s one of the most beautiful books, if you’re a parent it’s a great one to read to your child. I cried the first time I read it.