animate pose, blend movement animation

Hi, I have a question before I start animating in Unity. From what I've seen, generally animations are always a cycle or a sequence of movement. Say, a sitting animation is 24 frames which has the character sitting with whatever other movements(breathing, blinking, twitching, etc)

What I want to try is instead, have things like pose frame: Sit (2 frame) Stand(2 frame) Sleep(2 frame)

And then also have a secondary animation cycle: Not breathing, Breathing(24 frame), Choking breath(24 frame), surprised breath, etc Blinking(5 frame), closed eye, etc Tail relaxed(swing randomly), tail scared(down), tail happy(swing left right), etc etc

So later, the sit/stand/sleep will be in 1 layer, which I toggle by some event, and just blend the chest area for the breathing, the tail area for the tail wiggle stuff, etc. In the end I'd have 4 layer(Main pose layer, breathing layer, tail layer, face animation layer, etc).

Does this makes sense? I've never done animation in Unity before, and I always thought this is how it's done, with animation layer and stuff. But I haven't seen examples where this is done like this.

Does anyone have an experience doing it this way? If so, is there a more official way of doing so?

Cheers.