[kranner]

Others who have explained mindfulness of breathing in a modern way are Bhante Gunaratana, Bhikku Analayo, Culadasa, Larry Rosenberg, Bhikku Buddhadasa (though his take is unconventional), Michael Taft, etc.

But as you have said there are many more techniques. I've heard the breath called a relatively difficult meditation object for beginners.

[throw1234651234]

All I heard is a bunch of obscure references and name dropping. If there was a clear technique, one would be able to outline it like outlining the steps to deadlifting correctly.

[kranner]

There are many techniques that work. They can all be clearly outlined as well, but that is more work than I'm willing to undertake here. The names I dropped (as you kindly put it) have done all that work and compiled their efforts into well thought out, well written, well edited and well reviewed books. There are a lot of nuances and individual variations on problems that come up and how to get past them that all these books address.

But you have to make the effort of reading the books (or finding a competent teacher) and then practicing the techniques hard enough and long enough for a fair appraisal. 10 minutes a day of instructions from Headspace is predictably useless. You can write it off at that if you like, but it would be like pumping a dumbbell for two reps a day and concluding that weightlifting is useless as exercise.