NeuroQuantology | June 2016 | Volume 14 | Issue 2 | Page 149-154 | doi: 10.14704/nq.2016.14.2.933 Fracasso, Smith and Krippner. Editor’s introduction: Special edition on health, healing, and consciousness eISSN 1303-5150 www.neuroquantology.com 149 Editor’s Introduction: Special Issue: Health, Healing & Consciousness Cheryl L. Fracasso*, Kaleb R. Smith † , Stanley Krippner ‡ ABSTRACT This special edition by guest editors, Cheryl L. Fracasso, Kaleb R. Smith, and Stanley Krippner, presents 22 articles that cover a vast array of interdisciplinary and multicultural views on health, healing, and consciousness. The reader is sure to be intrigued, as cutting edge models of consciousness are presented, along with original research that examines the effectiveness of various mind/body healing methods ranging from yoga, meditation, Aikido, and medicinal drumming, to the use of psychedelics for healing, and many other thought provoking topics. Key Words: health, healing, consciousness, interdisciplinary, multicultural DOI Number: 10.14704/nq.2016.14.2.933 NeuroQuantology 2016; 2: 149-154 Introduction 1 The many cultures and eras of human development can be characterized by their systems of health and understanding of the body, mind, and spirit. In this way, medicine can, in its shamanic origins, be thought of as a branch of spirituality, with the physical manifestation of an illness being considered only one facet of disease. The Western medical model, characterized by materialistic reductionism, has been described as developing away from this more holistic body- mind-spirit approach to health and wellness, but that is not to say progress is not being made towards acknowledging the whole self in the West, especially in regards to the gradual but persistent integration of Eastern spiritual technique and philosophy since the 1960s. Corresponding authors: Cheryl L. Fracasso, Ph.D., Kaleb R. Smith, M.A., Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. Address: Saybrook University, 475 14 th Street, Ninth Floor, Oakland, CA. 94612 Phone: + (415) 394-5979 e-mail  cfracasso@saybrook.edu Relevant conflicts of interest/financial disclosures: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Received: 05 May 2016; Revised: 11 May 2016; Accepted: 15 May 2016 Meditation, for instance, has slowly but surely been accepted by mainstream medicine as a healthful personal practice, both physiologically and psychologically, if only as a means of stress relief. Other non-Western approaches to health acknowledging the interrelated body-mind-spirit aspects of self, like herbal medicine, yoga, and acupuncture, just to name a few, have continued to gain acceptance by the general public, despite initially being deemed as alternative medicines many in the mainstream medical community. This synthesis of cultural practices and cosmologies separated by millennia of time and thousands of miles increasingly informs the progress of Western science in its search for health and the attainment of healing. Our selected authors for this special edition with NeuroQuantology represent the richness of both this East/West synthesis and the synthesis of the physical, psychological, and quantum sciences, including explorations of indigenous and shamanic healing practices and their unique implications. Each of these perspectives suggests an exceptional range of human potential which may be made available by various practices of healing and consciousness