Asphalt materials exhibit intrinsic healing capabilities. Researchers have carried out numerous investigations to characterize various aspects related to healing in asphalt materials since 1960s. Nevertheless, due to the complexity associated with the healing mechanism, a diverse and sometimes contradicting understanding in terms of experimental methods, models and numerical analysis exists. This paper attempts to give an overview of various asphalt healing studies with an emphasis on mechanical testing and analysis and compares theories on the healing mechanism and their reported dependence on wide variety of factors including rest periods, temperature, aging, and moisture on the healing process. Bitumen, mastic, and asphaltic mixture levels are hereby included and the differences in the defined healing indices are discussed. The review shows that many of the commonly used analysis approaches can be challenged due to the co-existence of different phenomena during fatigue and healing. Possible post-processing methods that consider the non-linearity of the material response and decomposition of various modes of energy dissipation at multiple scales hold promise for unbiased quantification of healing.