I spent thirty three years at the Temple of the Universe. The thing that kept me there was never the mysticism, it was how practical it turned out to be. A long sit at five in the morning is wonderful. It is also not available to you at two in the afternoon when someone says the thing that lands wrong.
So the question I kept asking was what survives contact with an ordinary day. The answer was very small. Three breaths, done often, beats forty minutes done occasionally, because the point is not the depth of any single sit. The point is the number of times a day you catch yourself.
A clear mind does not mean a quiet mind. It means a mind aware that it is noisy. A strong mind hears the noise and does not take orders from it. Three breaths, eight times a day, is how you practice that in the middle of your life rather than away from it.
On the counting: four in and five out is not an ancient technique and I will not dress it up as one. It works because a longer exhale leans your nervous system toward the brake. I wrote the whole honest history of it here.