Just stay with the sensation of the breath. This is a lot of what the practice is: making it simpler and simpler as you go along, figuring out where your efforts are superfluous, where they’re unnecessary, and letting them drop.

"You want to keep things basic, simple. That way you maintain your focus, which is what it’s all about: getting the mind to be really solidly focused on one activity over and over and over again. Thinking about the breath, being aware of the breath, reminding yourself not to leave the breath: It’s a cluster of activities, but it’s focused in one direction, toward the breath. And as you get more precisely focused in, you can drop some of the extra activities.

When the breath feels comfortable coming in, going out, think of spreading that sense of comfort throughout the body. When you can maintain that sense of full-body awareness as you breathe in, as you breathe out, there’ll come a point where you don’t have to evaluate things anymore. You can’t improve the breath and you see that evaluation is actually getting in the way of settling down further. So you simplify things. You drop the evaluation. Just stay with the sensation of the breath. This is a lot of what the practice is: making it simpler and simpler as you go along, figuring out where your efforts are superfluous, where they’re unnecessary, and letting them drop."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Keep It Simple"

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