What is the point of silk reeling?

So, Mike Sigman raised an interesting point in his comments on my last post on silk reeling – “Silkreeling is about developing the elastic connections of the body.”

I agree with him. That’s probably not all silk reeling is about, but that’s the fundamental idea. But I wonder how many people who teach silk reeling or Tai Chi actually agree? I mean, there are so many style and different ways of doing Tai Chi these days that’s it’s almost like it’s become a terms for a grab bag of different skills all meshed together.

But perhaps we just need to establish a baseline. I’m interested to hear what you would call the point of silk reeling? How does that statement sit with you?