> count it without thinking numbers
...what? Are you telling me you can do this for some arbitrary period of time and then tell me the number of breaths you took, if asked? I find that really difficult to believe...
Same way you can tap your finger four times without counting, and you can do four taps four times without counting those.
Maybe more a musical skill.
The other way to deal with this exercise is just tapping for the odd count in one place and for the even in another. So you know when the fourth tap is because you subconsciously know it was long enough time after the second one and it is in the right place on the table.