You’re welcome, Paul, glad if my thoughts were any help.

I am playing relatively effortlessly compared to how I used to, but it is still a battle of mind and body.

I wasn’t able to play at all the other day and cleaned my horn today. I caught myself at times over exerting.

I have found it easier to catch myself earlier on when that happens.

I also used to battle my old tendencies / mental perception when playing harmonic slurs, treating them more as an endurance exercise to muscle through with lots of air.

Lately, I have found a lot of benefit from slowing things down, at least at first, and patiently observing each pitch, how it feels, sounds, trying to get away with barely moving to change pitch, making sure that pitch is optimal as well, etc. Then, once I feel like I have a good Shape idea /sensation for each pitch, repeating the slur again focusing on efficiently moving from one to the next.

I haven’t had the sensation you have, of one side or the other being stronger, but have caught myself over-blowing /engaging too much when focusing on speed, so I think slowing it down and even pausing on each pitch, improvising slurs up and down based on feel is beneficial–practice is experimentation, I think it’s beneficial not to stick to what’s written in the exercise books but to improvise exercises based on what I need to work on, how I’m feeling searching for more efficiency or optimal shape, etc.