User blog comment:Njalm2/The Beauty of Zanjutsu/@comment-136273-20150410194427

I acknowledge that my own take on Zanjutsu is limited, since the spiritual aspect is only briefly touched upon. However, with his blog here the article should make for a more complete guide. Thanks for mentioning me.

I agree with most of what you've written here except for releases. They're a bit too integral to Bleach and shonen as a whole to rule them out as semi-efficient or meaningless after a certain amount of development. A genuine Zanjutsu Master/Grandmaster should be able to release a Bankai, complete with appropriate increment of accessible power, swiftly and without effort, in a natural manner. The end result is very similar to what you've described, but IMHO the release should happen so as not to veer too far away from what we've seen in canon.

Energy conservation is a thing, too, and I tend to assume that only a certain amount of the total power can be wielded in the "default" state without burning out. Some sort of temporary transformation ought to occur to accomodate greater energy output.