Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

Two weeks ago, I did something bold, brave, and totally against the martial artist’s natural instinct.

I rested.

It wasn’t easy. I didn’t want to do it. But my body made the decision for me.

I had tweaked my left glute. I'm not sure how I didn't, I just know I didn't do it the fun way. But it quickly became one of those annoying injuries that doesn’t seem major at first, so you try to push through it. “It’s just a little pull,” I told myself. “I’ll work around it.”

Sound familiar?

But martial arts doesn’t always give you the luxury of working around a pain that affects your core stability. Tai Chi, Xingyi, Bagua — all require strong, coordinated lower-body mechanics. Even walking the dog became a lesson in humility.

Pivoting on my left leg, pushing back into a couch or recliner, bending over to tie my shoes or pet the dog -- everything sent me into a spasm of agony, like a knife was stabbing me in the butt! 

And sneezing! Don't even get me started. We are so connected inside our...

I received some tough news from my pulmonologist last week. Dr. Wong showed me the CT scan taken in December, when I spent four nights in the hospital because of a large blood clot in my left lung. The blood thinners I had been taking since June, when the clots developed, had not worked in this one case, and the clot was so big, it was threatening the blood supply to the left lung. Just a trickle of blood was getting in.

After we looked at the scan, he said this is major. If the blood clot is not reduced through the use of the blood thinners during the next six weeks, he will refer me to the Mayo Clinic, where I will be evaluated and it is possible they will put my heart on a bypass machine, go into the lung and clean out the clot. The evaluation will tell Mayo whether my heart is likely to withstand the operation.

"This is major," the doctor said. "But you have been through major things before."

These are the times when the practice of centering is not just theory. This is when it ...

A few months ago, I developed several blood clots in my left lung. I spent five days in the hospital and was put on blood thinners. 

I used to think that blood thinners dissolve blood clots, but they don't. Instead, they keep the clots from getting larger and then the body breaks down and absorbs the clot over time. 

So I have been on warfarin for the past five months and I went in last Thursday for a follow-up CT scan to see if they had gone away.

Instead, a clot had grown larger and it was threatening the blood flow to the left lung. Because of past bleeding issues, my doctors and I had been too conservative on the level of warfarin in my system, so the warfarin did not stop this clot from growing. It's strange because I have been teaching all along and taught two classes on Wednesday with no unusual problems. But due to the CT scan results, I was told to go to the hospital...again. It's a serious health situation.

In the past few days, I have been stuck with needles every few ho...

I am writing a book on how the philosophies that I learned during the time I have studied martial arts have guided me through some of the storms of life. 

Last week, I found that I was living a new chapter.

After a break of a few years, I suddenly began coughing up blood on Friday, June 4. We're not talking about the type of coughing up blood that you see in the movies -- a fleck or two in a handkerchief.

When I cough up blood, it looks like someone was shotgunned in my sink. I put a picture up on a blog post around 2015. It was gross.

This began in 2009, after three laser ablation procedures on my heart, attempting to stop atrial fibrillation. Instead, the final procedure shut down my  left pulmonary veins, so no oxygenated blood goes from my left lung to the heart.

How my body has survived the past 12 years, I have no idea, but it hasn't been easy, and it has made martial arts quite a challenge -- only one lung, coughing up blood occasionally, and, to add insult to injury, I d...

The image in this post (below) might be disturbing and is a bit personal. -- FYI.

Two weeks ago, a cardiologist put a pacemaker the size of a matchbox into my chest and ran wires down into my heart.

You have to go with the flow, right? 

Be water, my friend, right? Flow around obstacles and find your way.

I try to remain centered and be water, but this took me by surprise. My cardiologist and I had been talking about it for years, but the decision to do it was not made until about five days before we put the pacemaker in.

I still suffer from atrial fibrillation, also known as a-fib, and that causes my heart to beat erratically. Just sitting at my desk, or on the couch, my heart will suddenly jump from 60 beats per minute to 155 bpm, as if I am running the 100-yard dash. Then, after a few seconds it will drop to 70 beats per minute, and a couple of seconds later it will jump to 140 bpm. 

This can go on for hours. It makes me tired, and if I bend over, it makes me have to breathe he...

I went in to the hospital yesterday for a cardiac stress test. After a freak side-effect from a medical procedure nine years ago this month, my left pulmonary veins shut down, meaning my left lung is virtually useless. Doctors at Cleveland Clinic tried to stent one of the pulmonary veins, tore the vein and accidentally pierced my heart with the wire.

That set off complications that I have survived, barely it sometimes seems. But my chi is strong, right? Still, I sometimes have to get tests to make sure nothing is getting clogged up.

Cardiac stress tests have changed. They used to hook you up to electrodes and put you on a treadmill.

It's All in Vein

Now, they stick an IV in your arm, hook you up to electrodes and slide you into a tube, as if you're getting an MRI or something.

They pump radioactive crap into your vein and then take pictures. The new pictures are supposed to be a lot better than even the ones they took during my last cardiac stress test three or four years ago.

"A...

Caution: this post contains a very graphic photo below. If blood upsets you, don't scroll down.

I have spent five of the past six nights in the hospital, including two trips in an ambulance. I've had to postpone a podcast interview and a few gongfu practices.

It started when I was sitting in my home office and began coughing up blood. This went on for over half an hour. It stopped for half an hour and then began even harder. Nancy called 911 and the ambulance came.

By the time the coughing stopped, long after I arrived in the ER, about two pints of blood had come up from my lungs and out my mouth. At one point, it dawned on me that blood loss could cause me to pass out and there was a chance I wouldn't wake up. The ER at Illini Hospital couldn't help me, so after the bleeding stopped they sent me by ambulance 90 minutes away to Iowa City and the University of Iowa's Medical Intensive Care Unit.

They...

Don't take medical advice from someone who is not a doctor.

A martial artist in Europe contacted me recently and said that about two and a half years after he began practicing tai chi, hsing-i, bagua and qigong, he began feeling exhausted each time he practiced.

When he does other activities, the student feels good. But when he tries to do the internal arts, he is drained of energy and feels horrible.

His teacher told him that these arts "touch the soul and feelings." In short, the student must be doing something wrong.

There are a lot of quacks in the world of internal arts. "If you do this technique wrong, it will hurt your gall bladder, and if you don't do this movement correctly, it will harm your large intestine."

And people believe it. But, as we can see during this political season, or in churches throughout the world, people will believe just about anything. It doesn't have to make sense.

I advised this student to see a doctor. Have some tests run. Find out what's going o...

I am always broken-hearted to hear of the death of any kung-fu master, so I was very sorry to hear that Grandmaster Feng Zhiqiang passed away a few weeks ago. My condolences go out to his students and his family.

When great masters die, I check to see how long they have lived. Usually, it isn't a lot longer than the general population.

Grandmaster Feng was 83 or 84 - he was born in 1928.

And now comes the part of the post that some may find controversial but it is intended to carry the utmost respect for Grandmaster Feng.

He was a disciple of Hu Yaozhen, a Taoist qigong master. Grandmaster Feng studied with him and also with the great Taiji master Chen Fake. Feng eventually developed his own style of Chen Taiji that included qigong, silk-reeling exercises, etc.

I receive messages and scoldings occasionally from people who claim that qigong, and Taoist qigong, if done properly, will mean you will evade illness and disease, and will result in a very long life. I received some of the...

Caution - this story contains an image that might be disturbing.

On November 2nd, I was lying in a hospital bed with tubes down my throat -- on a respirator -- and watching TV through a haze of sedation that relaxed me so that I wouldn't gag and choke on the tubes. I had entered the hospital on October 19th, thinking I was having a 2-hour procedure that would fix a bleeding airway. I had been coughing up blood since February and the residual blood in the lungs made breathing a real challenge.

My kung-fu practice had been seriously affected throughout 2009, but I had no idea -- and neither did my doctors -- that I was losing the function of my left lung because the pulmonary veins going to the heart were closing down. They discovered this at the Cleveland Clinic, but when they tried to open the veins, they accidentally pierced my heart. They led Nancy to believe a couple of times that there was a good possibility I wouldn't make it out alive.

On November 2, I discovered that I was un...