If you consider yourself a gentle person and never would expect to be involved into any fight or life-threatening confrontation, but still want to learn how to protect yourself and your family in case you were to be engaged in a life or death situation, then I'd highly suggest you consider Wing Chun, a Chinese Kung Fu system popularized by one of the greatest martial artists of all times - Bruce Lee, as your best choice of self defense system.

It's a system that is simple and yet powerful. Its advantages have been well appreciated by professionals worldwide whose lives depend on their abilities to engage and win in life- threatening combats. VIPs protection units, soldiers, elite forces, police personel, body guards, or just plain civilians who want to ensure and secure safety from potential threats that might occur in unexpected situations. Let's not forget the martial art enthusiasts who consider martial arts as part of their lifestyle. They all consider Wing Chun to be one of the most practical and yet gentle form of fighting skills that can be learned easily.

The Wing Chun system operates on the subconscious levels. I've had the honor to study my Wing Chun skills under the discipleship of Sifu. Wong, shun-leung whose name you can very easily look up from the Blackbelt magazine, who was one of the few true masters of the art of Wing Chun, and did many a session of translation for him as he had many students who flew from all over the world to come to Hong Kong just to learn from him.

One of the basic and important principles of Wing Chun can be revealed via a simple mathematical formula: "Between 2 points the shortest distance is a straight line." Imagine that, all the fancy moves seen in many other martial art systems would have you move in big circular movements, or a big arc, so as to generate enough force to hit your target.

And yet the basic form of movement in Wing Chun is to station yourself squarely with the opponent and all you need is to carry out your movements in a straight line. And guess what, you'd end up hitting your target faster and harder 9 out of 10 times - before the opponent has a chance to reach you travelling in an arc form. Simple math, right?

Another great and interesting thing about Wing Chun is: it trains your body not to think when in combat, especially in close combat. The 'Sticky Hands' training is so powerful that even Bruce Lee came back to Hong Kong to meet with Sifu. Wong, shun-leung to freshen up his 'Sticky Hands' techniques. And by the way, this 'Sticky Hands' technique is one of the most essential parts of the whole Wing Chun system, which is then the backbone of Bruce Lee's Jeet Kun Do system.

I remember many years ago about a piece of news of a famous movie star in Hong Kong who was also a Wing Chun practitioner - he had a fight in the bar with a big and tall westerner who was then a police academy karate trainer. Both of them were drunk and involved in quite a fierce fight in the dark and confined area in the bar. Guess who won? The movie star did. Simply because when both of them were so drunk that they couldn't really think logically and that's when the advantage of the Wing Chun system came in.

When one is a competent Wing Chun martial artist, one can be blind-folded and still win the fight. That's how powerful the system is. Are you interested to become one of these gentle and yet powerful person?