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The History of Slavery is part of the whole picture too.    

 At the “North American Systemic Constellations Conference 2017” in Virginia Beach from 5^th to 8^th of October this year several workshops showed which strong impact slavery still has on the population of the United States and other countries.

Here are the facts:

„From the 16th to the 19th century about 29 million Black Africans were deported as slaves to America and Arabia. At least 12 million were deported across the Atlantic by European colonial powers (England, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, France) to work as slaves on cotton and tobacco plantations or in mining. The mortality rate during the transit was 10-20 percent. Three quarters of the displaced people came from West Africa, a quarter came from Central and South West Africa. The price for a slave was about two times the monthly wage of a European worker. In 1619 the first slaves came to the English colonies of North America. In 1776, in the year of the US Declaration of Independence, 567.000 black people lived in the country, 20% of the population. Their exploitation was the basis of the economy in the Southern States. Today the 35 million African Americans represent 12 percent of the population. It was not before 1865 that slavery was finally abolished in the US. Approximately 17 million Africans were deported by Muslim slave hunters to North Africa and the Middle East. There, slavery continued until the 20th century, in Saudi Arabia until 1963.”
(Source: Sönke Krüger, Welt-Online, 20.5.2007)

The drama and the trauma of slavery still is a heavy burden on the descendants of the enslaved people, as well as on the descendants of slave hunters, slave traders and slave owners. The psychological burden of both, black and white population of the United States of America is huge. I suppose this is also the case in other affected countries.
The symptoms vary from depression to anxiety, chronic physical pain, severe disorder of couple relationships, up to the disability of holding a relationship at all, lack of success in profession and much more. The affected people are mostly unaware of the traumatic causes. To survive, already their ancestors had tried to forget the terrible past.
The trauma of African slaves began in their villages in Africa. The Arab slave hunters invaded the villages, captured the young and strong people, and murdered all the others to avoid having witnesses to their crimes.

In a single day, people lost their relatives, their home and their freedom. This and all additional suffering and humiliation over generations is part of the background of American people with African roots. At the same time, the white perpetrators and beneficiaries unconsciously passed on their personal burdens to their descendants, who also suffer from symptoms and are not aware of the background of their suffering either.

The insight to this hidden truth is the first step towards healing, which begins on the personal level and can be magnified at the collective level through public healing rituals.
For further information read my speech „Collective Healing“, which I gave at the conference in Virginia Beach on the 7^th of October 2017.

I am convinced that healing is possible on a personal and a collective level. The systemic constellation work plays an important role in it and is supported by energetic-shamanic healing methods such as “Healing voices”.

By the conversation with descendants of enslaved people and by systemic constellations on the subject, I realized how important the contact to the roots in Africa is for these people. An important element on the path to healing could be a trip back to their village in Africa or at least to that landscape. There the healing could be supported by rituals from their culture. Maybe then they could return to America as also inwardly free people, who can be proud of their initial culture and roots.

Recommended exercise:

For descendants of enslaved people:
Return to the area in which the village of your ancestors was located and experience healing rituals there from your ancestral culture.

For descendants of slavehunters, slavetraders and slaveholders:
Look at people of color at eye level. Consider them as brothers and sisters. Apologize for what your ancestors did to their ancestors. Do compensation.

For all the others:
Look at all people, no matter of skin-color or origin, as brothers and sisters, as members of the same human family. Establish humanity as your nation.

Your

Karl-Heinz Rauscher
www.dr-rauscher.de