hepworthd on "Directory+sub-directory and files regex"

Is there a way to ignore a directory and everything under it using regex? Only examples I see are for files, nothing for an entire directory. Basically I want to back everything under /directory, but within the I have multiple users directories, and many under each user. I was to ignore say a /directory/user/temp using regex so nothing under /temp back's backed up.

Please shed some light.

thanks.