How to access $user_profile in page.tpl.php or $page in user-profile.tpl.php in Drupal 7?
As for including regions in user-profile.tpl.php here how you do it.

In your custom theme add the following code to template.php file

function mytheme_preprocess_user_profile(&amp;$variables) { 
  // List of all regions for the current theme
  foreach (system_region_list($GLOBALS['theme']) as $region_key =&gt; $region_name) {
    // Add content to $region variable
    if ($blocks = block_get_blocks_by_region($region_key)) {
      $variables['region'][$region_key] = $blocks;
    }
    else {
      $variables['region'][$region_key] = array();
    }
  }
}


Then copy user-profile.tpl.php to your custom theme and then place the following code between any HTML tag.

print render($region['region_name']);