It’s a beautiful tree! Hopefully IMO expert pruner Al can give you some much needed advice. Give others time to respond!

If/when you do prune, I hope you will consider propagating the cuttings! It's a lovely plant. I have a very small one.

Your plant will look best if the branches near the top are thinner and shorter than those at the bottom - that's how Mother Nature grows 'em. I can't see where the 2 heavy branches attach to the trunk, but, if there are other branches growing off the trunk above those branches, the 2 heavies should be removed entirely.

After that's done, pull the plant out and take 4 images of the plant against a solid background, rotating the tree 90* for each image. It's very difficult to look at 2D images, trying to figure out what the tree looks like in 3D.

The tree wants you (visually speaking) to allow lower growth to do what it wants for now, but restrain the upper 1/3 of the tree by regular pruning and the middle 1/3 by moderate pruning. You can grow a top on your tree anytime you like because 2/3 of the energy the tree makes (during photosynthesis) will naturally be devoted to the upper 1/3 of the tree. You can see confirmation of that fact just by looking at your tree - some of the youngest branches at the top are the heaviest - completely out of sync with what we see in nature. Pruning the top regularly disallows that.

Thoughts?

Al

Thanks @tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a) for the advice! This week I repotted it (same size container) to help with the leaning and did a very light prune to make the super long branches more manageable.

Here are some new photos from some different angles. What do you recommend?