So... a couple of answers, a weekend to think about it and a tiny bit of time to spare did yield something the answers are still missing.
But how to start... well, if you want to stick to reality, first thing you need to take care of is the most beloved argument of "that can't work" screamers:
Conservation of energy: So every force needs energy, to put it simple, right? Lets scramble through my favorite source of useful explanations for off-this-world-things: games and tv! And thankfully Star Gate and the X-Files offer two interesting examples right off the start.
First, in Star Gate there was that girl... something with C... Cassandra! Anyway, she was a - beside being a bomb - super human experiment of... Neferti (?)... some Indian looking female member of the never ending cast of Goua'uld. When getting older some nasty stuff caused a high fever, which she could expel from her body by channeling this heat inside iron stuff lying around, which made her levitate chess pins by electromagnetism.
Okay, thats maybe not the most day-to-day-friendly way of transferring energy for the sake of telekinesis. So than look over to the X-files. Hell, they do have several cases of this. One of the last episodes was about a guy which was a prime telekinet as a child but ended up manifesting a strange soap-opera to make him feel ok when he was grown up. In that case electro-magnetism and... spectral matter (?) were used to explain this.
But thats not the case I was looking for. Yes, they do have a telepath (that chess playing kid), but I was going for The Pusher.
I can't recall his movie-name, but the Pusher was able to talk people into any stuff he wanted by forced suggestion. Unfortunately (for him) he had to pay for this: a tumor in his head at the first place, and extreme exhaustion at the second place.
So, in this last example the body himself was used to create the excess energy needed to do some paranormal stuff. That is something you could use after all - your paranormal people would suffer from extreme exhaustion if they use their abilities in great quantities. On problem still persists:
Appliance of Force: So... you have a source of energy, bu no way to apply it to a target. Its like a spacecraft in space that produces way to much heat without being able to radiate it. So you need a medium to transfer this energy.
What do we have? Air? Water? Hm... could work, but would need fancy telling to make it sound plausible. What else do we have? Ah... the Aura.
Subject of controversy first class. What it is and how it does work is not entirely sure at the moment. Going the more scientific approach would lead to something like "the electromagnetic field the body radiates", which isn't as implausible as one might think at the first moment, because our brains, muscles and nerves working by applying electric currents at the right destination.
Going more spiritual would lead to words like "Ki" and "Chi", which come from the far eastern religions... and here we are back to the esoteric guys, which tell you that you need to meditate to ... I don't know, sometimes I think its their way to force away others by keep on claiming "you are doing it wrong" when their explanations wont work after all...
Anyway. If you want your Aura to lift cookies, you need to know how to use it. Applying extreme magnetic fields will lift anything - even insulators - but thats out of question. Right here the science ends and the narrative steps in, gently taking the "why" to realms where the answer is "I can't explain... its like describing a blind guy how a field of flowers does look during a solar eclipse below an aurora".
But still, using your own magnetic belt to influence stuff around you isn't such a blind shot. After all, we all did feel the pressure a old monitor could apply to you fingers when charged. it wasn't a real barrier, just a bunch of static electricity, but still you can feel it! Sadly nowdays no kid will know what I'm speaking about, because flat screens doesn't do something like this any more.
Conclusion: But if you want my version, keep the possibilities at a low end - no matter how angry you get or how well you can apply your Chi to objects around you, it won't make you able to lift a car, because your whole body could not generate the energy needed to pull this of in such a short time I think. but grappling the towel from the other side of the bath-room? Here we go.
And if you need more practical appliances, just knot the bad guys shoos together. That would be as useful (and funny) as levitating him.
EDiT: What about pyrokinesis? Apply your energy at a really small point, and you will just went beyond the inflammation point.