ABOUT MIKE BUNKER
In December 2024, I had a total hip replacement. The surgery went beautifully.
A few months later I walked back into a métro station in Paris — a station I'd struggled down before surgery, when my hip was bone-on-bone and every step was a negotiation. I was pain-free. Structurally, there was no reason for what happened next.
I had something close to a panic attack.
The hardware had been replaced. The software hadn't caught up. My brain was still running the old file: stairs, this station, danger. That gap — between a joint that is objectively fine and a nervous system that hasn't been told yet — is the thing almost no rehab program addresses. It's the entire reason this program exists.
Credentials and background:
- Yoga Medicine® 500-Hour Registered Therapeutic Specialist, currently completing advanced training toward 1000-Hour certification
- HeartMath® Institute Resilience Coach
- Primal Health Coach · Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) Coach
- Yoga Trainiung with Donna Farhi, Ally Boothroyd, Indu Arora, YogaFit, Yoga Medicine
- B.Sc. Computer Science (UNB) · Digital Marketing & Analytics (UBC)
- 35 years in a desk-bound IT career before this work — which is its own kind of hip problem, and part of why I understand this one from the inside
My work is grounded in current research in movement science, pain science, and anatomy. I approach the body as an interconnected system — helping clients debug movement patterns rather than just stretch them.
A note on scope: I'm not a physician, surgeon, or physiotherapist, and this program doesn't replace them. It works alongside your medical team, on the part of recovery they don't have time to address.
THE MISSING LINK
Total hip replacement is one of the most successful operations in modern medicine. So why do so many people end up with a joint that works and a body that still won't trust it?
The research has a name for it — and it's been hiding in plain sight.
Fear of movement is common after hip replacement, and it tracks with pain. Studies of post-THA patients using the Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia have found meaningful rates of movement fear persisting after surgery, correlating with pain scores — an adaptation that made sense during the painful years before surgery, and then simply never switched off.
→ Kinesiophobia Post Total Hip Arthroplasty: A Retrospective Study (PubMed)
It starts before the operating room. In patients with severe hip osteoarthritis awaiting hip replacement, higher fear of movement and pain catastrophizing were associated with lower quality of life. The threat map is built during the waiting period — which is exactly why this program starts pre-surgery where possible.
→ Kinesiophobia and pain catastrophizing in severe hip OA (PubMed)
And the psychological side of hip recovery is under-studied — by the researchers' own admission. A systematic review of psychological factors affecting hip and knee replacement outcomes found strong evidence for the knee, and explicitly noted that for hip patients the evidence was limited, conflicting, or absent. Not "it doesn't matter" — nobody has properly looked. That gap is what this case study cohort is designed to help fill.
→ Psychological factors affecting the outcome of total hip and knee arthroplasty (PubMed)
Meanwhile, the tool is already validated elsewhere. Heart rate variability biofeedback built around slow, paced breathing has been tested in randomized trials for chronic pain, with measurable improvement in pain interference. Separately, reviews of slow breathing and HRV consistently show improved baroreflex sensitivity and vagal tone — the physiological mechanism underneath "settling down."
→ HRV biofeedback and chronic pain — randomised controlled trial (PubMed)
→ Slow breathing and heart rate variability — review (PubMed)
