The second way is energetic.  My first feng shui teacher said that the “dirty energy” we’re eliminating, or that can result from any stagnant water and stagnant air combination elsewhere in the bathroom where oxygen is low, can also promote illness.  When the lid is up and a bathroom door is open, this energy also travels out along a pathway from room to room.  We did a comparison of simply sensing the difference with our hands when a toilet lid was up or down, by gently palpating the air over the toilet.  When the lid was up the air felt denser and a bit uncomfortable, and with the lid down the air was lighter and had a more pleasant quality (done over an apparently clean toilet).

I was taught that if there is “dirty energy” in a bathroom from the toilet or anything else in there that isn’t clean, and the bathroom door is left open, there’s the possibility that someone sleeping in an adjacent bedroom in the path of the air currents or this traveling energy pathway might experience health issues in that part of the body that is lying in the energy pathway during sleep.  I had a client who had a cat box in the bathtub to keep the cat litter neater, and the open bathroom door was directly in line with where the middle of the client’s body would be on the bed at night.  I asked the client if they experienced digestive issues, and was told they did. The condition subsided when the cat box was removed and the bathroom door left mostly closed.

To keep the air and energy healthy in a bedroom or any room near a bathroom:

Civilizations rise or fall in part depending upon the state of our hygiene, the state of our water and air.  Every simple measure we take and habit we have that helps to ensure the safety of water and air directly affects our health and well-being,  A simple flick of the wrist to close a lid or a bathroom door can have more cumulative benefit than one might realize.