Recent work on fast‐wave propagation in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies has shown that the fast‐wave transmission and reflection coefficients can be obtained from a second‐order equation in which the ion Bernstein mode is treated as a driven response to the fast wave. Although this yields the total power lost from the fast wave, it does not enable one to say how much power is damped locally because of cyclotron damping and how much propagates away in the Bernstein mode. In the present paper attention is turned to this problem and a coupling model is developed in which a Bernstein wave‐energy equation is derived and the power absorbed from the fast wave is used as a source for it. Information about the Bernstein wave amplitude is thus lost, but for both low‐ and high‐field incidence it is shown how the problem of fast‐wave and Bernstein wave‐energy propagation can be treated by a series of equations of no higher than second order that pose no numerical problems and can be integrated together as a single initial value problem. This yields a simple and efficient numerical technique, the results of which compare well with more complicated procedures.