Get current region name in node template Drupal 7
If anyone else runs into this and wants to know what region the node is being displayed in within the node template using the node block module or something like it. You can use the template_preprocess_node($vars) function and add the region to the content so that it will be in the content array in the node template like this.

$vars['content']['region'] = $vars['elements']['#block']-&gt;region;