“Open your mouth slightly. Let 20% of it drift out. Now, close your mouth and inhale through your nose. Not your mouth.”

Smoking has a massive social performance anxiety component. Beginners are afraid of looking inexperienced. That fear tightens their throat, which guarantees a cough. Nina Marta’s final instruction is always the same: Smile, relax your jaw, and pretend you are yawning. You cannot cough and yawn at the same time. The yawn opens the epiglottis and relaxes the vagus nerve.

For anyone who has ever watched a novice smoker take their first drag, the scene is painfully familiar: the polite but awkward puff, the cheeks puffing out like a blowfish, followed by a cough that sounds like a seal barking. The problem isn’t the product; it’s the technique. Inhaling smoke into the lungs is not a natural human reflex. It is a learned skill.

Nose inhale? This is another Nina Marta trick. If the smoke is still too hot for a mouth-lung inhale, inhale it through the nose. The nasal passages have more moisture and a longer pathway, cooling the smoke further. Leo inhales through his nose. His shoulders drop. He exhales through his mouth. No cough.

Now, the drill: Using only the muscles of the cheeks (not the diaphragm), the student sucks air into their mouth as if sipping a thick milkshake through a straw. The cheeks may collapse slightly. The lungs remain completely still.

This slow exhale prevents the rapid temperature change that triggers the cough reflex. When you blast smoke out, cold air rushes in behind it, shocking the bronchi. Slow release means no shock. In a popular unlisted workshop video titled "Nina Marta Teaching a Beginner How to Inhale Smoking (No Cough Method)," Nina works with a student named Leo, a 24-year-old who has never smoked anything due to asthma anxiety.

Nina Marta instructs: “Remove the cigarette from your lips. Keep your mouth closed like you have a secret inside. Now, without moving your mouth muscles, open a tiny hole in the back of your throat and take a sharp, deep breath through your mouth—just like you just surfaced from a swimming pool.”

By teaching the "mouth draw to fresh air breath" technique, Nina reduces the total particulate matter entering the deep lung by nearly 30% compared to a direct lung inhale, simply because the smoke mixes with more oxygen. For a beginner, this is the difference between a pleasant head change and a night of throat lozenges. The most important lesson from Nina Marta teaching a beginner how to inhale smoking is not a physical technique at all. It is psychological. Nina tells every student: “You are allowed to look stupid. You are allowed to cough. You are allowed to try three times and throw the thing in the dirt.”