Technique Question: Creating a Twist

I have a question about technique. Let's say I've got a tree with a lot of movement, but in multiple planes: left-to-right at the bottom, back-to-front at the top, and I want to rotate the top portion 45 degrees or so, so that all the movement in the tree is left-to-right. Does anyone have any interesting tricks to accomplish this? I figured I could run heavy wire along the trunk to reinforce, wrap with raffia, then wire and just twist it, but I was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions? Thanks.

Yup the old answer "it depends". What species, how old, how big, etc. Pictures would help as well.